Accumulating evidence has shown that dysfunctional mitochondria can be selectively removed by mitophagy. Dysregulation of mitophagy is implicated in the development of neurodegenerative disease and metabolic disorders. How individual mitochondria are recognized for removal and how this process is regulated remain poorly understood. Here we report that FUNDC1, an integral mitochondrial outer-membrane protein, is a receptor for hypoxia-induced mitophagy. FUNDC1 interacted with LC3 through its typical LC3-binding motif Y(18)xxL(21), and mutation of the LC3-interaction region impaired its interaction with LC3 and the subsequent induction of mitophagy. Knockdown of endogenous FUNDC1 significantly prevented hypoxia-induced mitophagy, which could be reversed by the expression of wild-type FUNDC1, but not LC3-interaction-deficient FUNDC1 mutants. Mechanistic studies further revealed that hypoxia induced dephosphorylation of FUNDC1 and enhanced its interaction with LC3 for selective mitophagy. Our findings thus offer insights into mitochondrial quality control in mammalian cells.

Systematic analyses of spatiotemporal gene expression trajectories during organogenesis have been challenging because diverse cell types at different stages of maturation and differentiation coexist in the emerging tissues. We identified discrete cell types as well as temporally and spatially restricted trajectories of radial glia maturation and neurogenesis in developing human telencephalon. These lineage-specific trajectories reveal the expression of neurogenic transcription factors in early radial glia and enriched activation of mammalian target of rapamycin signaling in outer radial glia. Across cortical areas, modest transcriptional differences among radial glia cascade into robust typological distinctions among maturing neurons. Together, our results support a mixed model of topographical, typological, and temporal hierarchies governing cell-type diversity in the developing human telencephalon, including distinct excitatory lineages emerging in rostral and caudal cerebral cortex.

High-throughput single-cell transcriptomics offers an unbiased approach for understanding the extent, basis, and function of gene expression variation between seemingly identical cells. Here, we sequence single-cell RNA-Seq libraries prepared from over 1,700 primary mouse bone marrow derived dendritic cells (DCs) spanning several experimental conditions. We find substantial variation between identically stimulated DCs, in both the fraction of cells detectably expressing a given mRNA and the transcript’s level within expressing cells. Distinct gene modules are characterized by different temporal heterogeneity profiles. In particular, a “core” module of antiviral genes is expressed very early by a few “precocious” cells, but is later activated in all cells. By stimulating cells individually in sealed microfluidic chambers, analyzing DCs from knockout mice, and modulating secretion and extracellular signaling, we show that this response is coordinated via interferon-mediated paracrine signaling. Surprisingly, preventing cell-to-cell communication also substantially reduces variability in the expression of an early-induced “peaked” inflammatory module, suggesting that paracrine signaling additionally represses part of the inflammatory program. Our study highlights the importance of cell-to-cell communication in controlling cellular heterogeneity and reveals general strategies that multicellular populations use to establish complex dynamic responses.

Using a newly prepared nearly monodisperse (M w/Mn < 1.05) high molar mass (Mw ) 1.3 × 10 7 g/mol) poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) sample, we successfully, for the first time, made the conformation of individual PNIPAM chains change from a coil to a fully collapsed thermodynamically stable single chain globule and then back to a coil in an extremely dilute aqueous solution (∼6.7 × 10 -7 g/mL). The average chain density in the globule state is ∼0.34 g/mL, close to 0.40 g/cm 3 predicted on the basis of a space-filling model, indicating that the globule still contains ∼66% water even in its fully collapsed state. At a given temperature around the lower critical solution temperature, the chains are smaller in the globule-to-coil transition than in the coil-to-globule transition, revealing that the coil-toglobule transition is an irreversible process. The hysteresis can be attributed to the formation of intrachain structures, presumably the intrachain hydrogen bonding, in the globule state. We confirmed the existence of the crumpled coil and the molten globule states between the random coil and the collapsed globule states. The coil-to-crumpled coil transition can be reasonably described by the Birshtein and Pryamitsyn theory.