No abstract

Endometriosis is an estrogen-dependent chronic inflammatory disease that affects approximately 10% of women of reproductive age and up to 50% of women with infertility. The heterogeneity of the disease makes accurate diagnosis and treatment a clinical challenge. In this study, we generated two models of endometriosis: the first in rats and the second using human ectopic endometrial stromal cells (HEcESCs) derived from the lesion tissues of endometriosis patients. We then applied resveratrol to assess its therapeutic potential. Resveratrol intervention had significant efficacy to attenuate lesion size and to rectify aberrant lipid profiles of model rats. Lipidomic analysis revealed significant lipidomic alterations, including notable increases of sphingolipids and decreases of both glycerolipids and most phospholipids. Upon resveratrol application, both proliferation capacity and invasiveness parameters decreased, and the early apoptosis proportion increased for HEcESCs. The activation of PPARα was also noted as a factor potentially contributing to recovery from endometriosis in both models. Our study provides valuable insight into the mechanisms of resveratrol in endometriosis and therefore strengthens the potential for optimizing resveratrol treatment for this disease.

By the end of neurogenesis in Drosophila pupal brain neuroblasts (NBs), nuclear Prospero (Pros) triggers cell cycle exit and terminates NB lifespan. Here, we reveal that in larval brain NBs, an intrinsic mechanism facilitates import and export of Pros across the nuclear envelope via a Ran‐mediated nucleocytoplasmic transport system. In rangap mutants, the export of Pros from the nucleus to cytoplasm is impaired and the nucleocytoplasmic transport of Pros becomes one‐way traffic, causing an early accumulation of Pros in the nuclei of the larval central brain NBs. This nuclear Pros retention initiates NB cell cycle exit and leads to a premature decrease of total NB numbers. Our data indicate that RanGAP plays a crucial role in this intrinsic mechanism that controls NB lifespan during neurogenesis. Our study may provide insights into understanding the lifespan of neural stem cells during neurogenesis in other organisms.

Edited by Mike Shipston Atg101 is an autophagy-related gene identified in worms, flies, mice, and mammals, which encodes a protein that functions in autophagosome formation by associating with the ULK1-Atg13-Fip200 complex. In the last few years, the critical role of Atg101 in autophagy has been well-established through biochemical studies and the determination of its protein structure. However, Atg101's physiological role, both during development and in adulthood, remains less understood. Here, we describe the generation and characterization of an Atg101 lossof-function mutant in Drosophila and report on the roles of Atg101 in maintaining tissue homeostasis in both adult brains and midguts. We observed that homozygous or hemizygous Atg101 mutants were semi-lethal, with only some of them surviving into adulthood. Both developmental and starvation-induced autophagy processes were defective in the Atg101 mutant animals, and Atg101 mutant adult flies had a significantly shorter lifespan and displayed a mobility defect. Moreover, we observed the accumulation of ubiquitin-positive aggregates in Atg101 mutant brains, indicating a neuronal defect. Interestingly, Atg101 mutant adult midguts were shorter and thicker and exhibited abnormal morphology with enlarged enterocytes. Detailed analysis also revealed that the differentiation from intestinal stem cells to enterocytes was impaired in these midguts. Cell type-specific rescue experiments disclosed that Atg101 had a function in enterocytes and limited their growth. In summary, the results of our study indicate that Drosophila Atg101 is essential for tissue homeostasis in both adult brains and midguts. We propose that Atg101 may have a role in age-related processes. Autophagy (macroautophagy) is a process in which cytoplasmic materials, including organelles and macromolecules, are delivered to and degraded in the lysosome (1-4). As a major intracellular degradation system, autophagy plays important roles in development, tissue homeostasis, and aging (5-7). Defects in the autophagy pathway cause various human diseases, such as cancer and neurodegenerative diseases (8-10). Genetic studies from budding yeast have identified more than 30 Atg genes, which function at various steps during autophagy (2, 3, 11). Most of these genes are highly conserved from yeast to mammals (3, 11). Among them, the Atg1 complex acts at the initiation stage of autophagy functioning as a scaffold for the recruitment of downstream Atg 2 proteins to the preautophagosomal structure (4, 11-13). The yeast Atg1 complex consists of Atg1, Atg13, Atg17, Atg29, and Atg31, and its mammalian counterpart is composed of ULK1 (or ULK2), Atg13, FIP200 (also known as RB1CC1) and Atg101 (4, 11-13). Mammalian ULK1 and ULK2 are homologs of Atg1 (13). FIP200 is generally considered as a homolog of yeast Atg11 and Atg17 (13). Homologs of Atg29 and Atg31 are not found in higher eukaryotes (13). In contrast, Atg101 is present in most eukaryotes, with the exception of budding yeast (13). It has been proposed that the regu...