Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0038187 (starvation)
 24,951 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Apoptosis Inducing Factor (AIF), a phylogenetically conserved mitochondrial inter-membrane space flavoprotein has an important role in caspase independent cell death. Nevertheless, AIF is also essential for cell survival. It is required for mitochondrial organization and energy metabolism. Upon apoptotic stimulation, AIF induces DNA fragmentation after its mitochondrio-nuclear translocation. Although it executes critical cellular functions in a coordinated manner, the exact mechanism still remains obscure. The present study aims to understand AIF's role in cell survival, growth and development by its down-regulation in an interesting unicellular eukaryote, D. discoideum which exhibits multicellularity upon starvation. Constitutive AIF down-regulated (dR) cells exhibited slower growth and delayed developmental morphogenesis. Also, constitutive AIF dR cells manifested high intracellular ROS, oxidative DNA damage and calcium levels with lower ATP content. Interestingly, constitutive AIF dR cells showed amelioration in cell growth upon antioxidant treatment, strengthening its role as ROS regulator. Under oxidative stress, AIF dR cells showed early mitochondrial membrane depolarization followed by AIF translocation from mitochondria to nucleus and exhibited necrotic cell death as compared to paraptoptic cell death of control cells. Thus, the results of this study provide an exemplar where AIF is involved in growth and development by regulating ROS levels and maintaining mitochondrial function in D. discoideum, an evolutionarily significant model organism exhibiting caspase independent apoptosis.
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PMID:Potential role of Apoptosis Inducing Factor in evolutionarily significant eukaryote, Dictyostelium discoideum survival. 2766 34

Plant respiration mostly depends on the activity of glycolysis and the oxidation of organic acids in the tricarboxylic acid cycle to synthesize ATP. However, during stress situations plant cells also use amino acids as alternative substrates to donate electrons through the electron-transfer flavoprotein (ETF)/ETF:ubiquinone oxidoreductase (ETF/ETFQO) complex to the mitochondrial electron transport chain (mETC). Given this, we investigated changes of the oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) system in Arabidopsis thaliana cell culture under carbohydrate starvation supplied with a range of amino acids. Induction of isovaleryl-CoA dehydrogenase (IVDH) activity was observed under carbohydrate starvation which was associated with increased amounts of IVDH protein detected by immunoblotting. Furthermore, activities of the protein complexes of the mETC were reduced under carbohydrate starvation. We also observed that OXPHOS system activity behavior is differently affected by different amino acids and that proteins associated with amino acids catabolism are upregulated in cells following carbohydrate starvation. Collectively, our results support the contention that ETF/ETFQO is an essential pathway to donate electrons to the mETC and that amino acids are alternative substrates to maintain respiration under carbohydrate starvation.
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PMID:Differential impact of amino acids on OXPHOS system activity following carbohydrate starvation in Arabidopsis cell suspensions. 2876 34

Autophagy is a highly conserved cellular mechanism in eukaryotes allowing the degradation of cell constituents. It is of crucial significance in both cellular homeostasis and nutrient recycling. During energy limited conditions plant cells can metabolize alternative respiratory substrates, such as amino acids, providing electrons to the mitochondrial metabolism via the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle or electron transfer flavoprotein/ electron transfer flavoprotein ubiquinone oxidoreductase (ETF/ETFQO) system. Our recent study reveals the importance of autophagy in the supply of amino acids to provide energy through alternative pathways of respiration during carbon starvation. This fact apart, autophagy seems to have more generalized effects related not only to amino acid catabolism but also to metabolism in general. By further comparing the metabolic data obtained with atg mutants with those of mutants involved in the alternative pathways of respiration, we observed clear differences between these mutants, pointing out additional effects of the autophagy deficiency on metabolism of Arabidopsis leaves. Collectively, our data point to an interdependence between mitochondrial metabolism and autophagy and suggest an exquisite regulation of primary metabolism under low energetic conditions.
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PMID:Commonalities and differences in plants deficient in autophagy and alternative pathways of respiration on response to extended darkness. 2893 54

The vacuolar lytic degradation of proteins releases free amino acids that plants can use instead of sugars for respiratory energy production. Autophagy is a major cellular process leading to the transport of proteins into the vacuole for degradation. Here, we examine the contribution of autophagy to the amino acid metabolism response to sugar starvation in mature leaves of Arabidopsis thaliana. During sugar starvation arising from the exposure of wild-type (WT) plants to darkness, autophagic transport of chloroplast stroma, which contains most of the proteins in a leaf, into the vacuolar lumen was induced within 2 d. During this time, the level of soluble proteins, primarily Rubisco (ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase), decreased and the amount of free amino acid increased. In dark-treated autophagy-defective (atg) mutants, the decrease of soluble proteins was suppressed, which resulted in the compromised release of basic amino acids, branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) and aromatic amino acids. The impairment of BCAA catabolic pathways in the knockout mutants of the electron transfer flavoprotein (ETF)/ETF:ubiquinone oxidoreductase (etfqo) complex and the electron donor protein isovaleryl-CoA dehydrogenase (ivdh) caused a reduced tolerance to dark treatment similar to that in the atg mutants. The enhanced accumulation of BCAAs in the ivdh and etfqo mutants during the dark treatment was reduced by additional autophagy deficiency. These results indicate that vacuolar protein degradation via autophagy serves as an adaptive response to disrupted photosynthesis by providing substrates to amino acid catabolic pathways, including BCAA catabolism mediated by IVDH and ETFQO.
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PMID:Vacuolar Protein Degradation via Autophagy Provides Substrates to Amino Acid Catabolic Pathways as an Adaptive Response to Sugar Starvation in Arabidopsis thaliana. 2939 Jan 57


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