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Leucine supplementation mimics the effects of caloric restriction on yeast chronological lifespan

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Abstract

Backgrounds

Leucine prototrophic yeast exhibits extended longevity and related phenotypes similar to yeast grown under calorie restriction (CR) condition. The extended longevity of leucine prototrophic yeast is thought to be a function of abundant cellular leucine level.

Objective

To verify the similar effects of leucine-induced and CR-induced chronological life span (CLS), leucine prototrophic and auxotrophic yeast cells were grown in the presence or absence of exogenous leucine supplementation and CR condition, and their lifespan and various phenotypes were examined.

Results

Leucine supplementation induced CLS extension, increased cellular Cox2p levels, and decreased cell death. These phenotypes were similar to those of the cells grown under CR. Interestingly, simultaneous treatment with exogenous leucine supplementation and CR led to a synergistic effect. CLS and cellular Cox2p levels increased further by simultaneous treatment compared to the observations in cells treated with either leucine supplementation or CR. Similarly, the rate of cell death of simultaneously treated cells was significantly lower than that of cells undergoing only one treatment.

Conclusion

Leucine-induced CLS extension and a decreased in the rate of cell death observed in this study verified the function of leucine in cell death prevention and CLS extension in yeast. Interestingly, leucine-induced changes were similar to CR-induced changes. The results in this study suggest that leucine can function as a CR mimetic.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by INHA UNIVERSITY Research Grant 61570 to S.-K.L.

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Contributions

Conception and design: SKL; developing of methodology: CMG and SKL; acquisition of data: CMG and OTJ; interpretation of data: CMG, OTJ, and SKL; preparation of the manuscript: OTJ and SKL; study supervision: SKL.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sung-Keun Lee.

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Conflict of interests

Choco Michael Gorospe, Olumide Temitayo Jemiseye and Sung-Keun Lee declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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The article does not contain any studies with human and animal, and this study was performed following institutional and national guidelines.

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Gorospe, C.M., Jemiseye, O.T. & Lee, SK. Leucine supplementation mimics the effects of caloric restriction on yeast chronological lifespan. Mol. Cell. Toxicol. 18, 39–45 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13273-021-00166-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13273-021-00166-1

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