Abstract
Cubic membranes (CM) are highly organized membrane structures found in biological systems. They are mathematically well defined and reveal a three-dimensional nano-periodic structure with cubic symmetry. These membrane arrangements are frequently induced in cells under stress, disease conditions, or upon viral infection. In this study, we investigated CM formation in the mitochondria of amoeba Chaos carolinense and observed a striking correlation between the organism’s ability to generate CM and the cell survival under starvation. Since starvation also induces autophagy, rapamycin was used to pharmacologically induce autophagy, and interestingly, CM formation was observed in parallel. Conversely, inhibition of autophagy reverted the cubic mitochondrial inner membrane morphology to tubular structure. In starved Chaos cells, mitochondria and autophagosomes did not co-localize and ATP production was sustained. CM transition in the mitochondria during starvation or upon induction of autophagy might prevent their sequestration by autophagosomes, thus slowing their rate of degradation. Such sustained mitochondrial activity may allow amoeba Chaos cells to survive for a longer period upon starvation.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Dr. Richard D. Allen and Dr. Masaki Ishida for providing Paramecium multimicronucleatum cell cultures, Professor Sepp D. Kohlwein, and Dr. Qingqiu Gong (College of Life Sciences, Nankai University, China) for critically reading the manuscript and providing helpful comments. We would also like to extend our gratitude to the Electron Microscopy Unit (Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore) for providing the facility for this work. This work was supported by grants from BMRC, Singapore (R-185-000-197-305), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.: 31670841), and the Wenzhou Institute of Biomaterials and Engineering (Grant No.: WIBEZD2015010-02) to Yuru Deng.
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Figure S1.
Growth trend of amoeba Chaos with different feed (Para vs. Tetra). Growth rates were determined for amoeba cells cultivated on Paramecium (Para) or Tetrahymena (Tetra) by counting the number of amoeba in each culture dish at two-day interval (up to ten days). Data are presented as means ± S.D. of three independent experiments; the asterisk is considered significant with p<0.05. (GIF 281 kb).
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Chong, K., Almsherqi, Z.A., Shen, HM. et al. Cubic membrane formation supports cell survival of amoeba Chaos under starvation-induced stress. Protoplasma 255, 517–525 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00709-017-1169-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00709-017-1169-x