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Translational regulation of growth arrest and DNA damage-inducible gene GADD34 via its 5' untranslated region upstream open reading frame during eukaryotic initiation factor 2 alpha phosphorylation

University of British Columbia

Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress activates an integrated stress response which causes inhibition of overall protein synthesis via phosphorylation of the eukaryotic initiation factor 2alpha (eIF2alpha). However, ER stress also results in selective translation of mRNAs, one of which is a transcription factor ATF4. ATF4 activates transcription of downstream stress-induced genes such as growth arrest and DNA-damage inducible gene 34 (GADD34) under ER stress. The function of GADD34 is to dephosphorylate eIF2alpha by interacting with protein phosphatase 1, thus leading to recovery of overall protein synthesis and translation of stress-induced transcripts through a negative feedback mechanism. In this thesis, we showed that GADD34 is not only transcriptionally induced, but also translationally regulated for maximal expression under ER stress. Translational regulation of GADD34 was mediated by its 5’ untranslated region (5’ UTR), which was found to contain two upstream open reading frames (uORFs) in human and mouse. It was revealed that the downstream uORF2 is required for basal repression and translational upregulation under ER stress, while the upstream uORF1 is dispensable in this regulation. In addition, the uORF2 is readily recognized and translated, but the uORF1 is bypassed by the scanning ribosomes. Further mutational analysis on the GADD34 5’ UTR demonstrated that the uORF2 and the intercistronic region between the uORF2 and the main ORF are sufficient to direct translation when eIF2alpha is phosphorylated. In this process, the amino acid/nucleotide identity of the uORF2 was not required, but its conserved size was important. The sequence conservation within the intercistronic region also was identified, but changing the length and pyrimidine:purine ratio in this region did not significantly affect translational regulation. Finally, we set up in vitro translation systems where cap-dependent translation is compromised by inhibiting ternary complex and eIF4F formation in order to test GADD34 translational regulation. The results from the current thesis suggest that GADD34 translation is mediated through its 5’ UTR via a unique mechanism, which may serve as a model to understand translational regulation of other uORFs-containing mRNAs under cellular stress.

Text

2010-01-04

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/17442

Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/