The deacetylase HDAC6 is a novel critical component of stress granules involved in the stress response

  1. SoHee Kwon1,
  2. Yu Zhang2, and
  3. Patrick Matthias3
  1. Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, Novartis Research Foundation, 4058 Basel, Switzerland

Abstract

An essential part of the cellular response to environmental stress is a reversible translational suppression, taking place in dynamic cytoplasmic structures called stress granules (SGs). We discovered that HDAC6, a cytoplasmic deacetylase that acts on tubulin and HSP90 and also binds ubiquitinated proteins with high affinity, is a novel critical SG component. We found that HDAC6 interacts with another SG protein, G3BP (Ras-GTPase-activating protein SH3 domain-binding protein 1), and localizes to SGs under all stress conditions tested. We show that pharmacological inhibition or genetic ablation of HDAC6 abolishes SG formation. Intriguingly, we found that the ubiquitin-binding domain of HDAC6 is essential and that SGs are strongly positive for ubiquitin. Moreover, disruption of microtubule arrays or impairment of motor proteins also prevents formation of SGs. These findings identify HDAC6 as a central component of the stress response, and suggest that it coordinates the formation of SGs by mediating the motor-protein-driven movement of individual SG components along microtubules.

Keywords

Footnotes

  • 1 Present addresses: The Stowers Institute for Medical Research, 1000 E. 50th St., Kansas City, MO 64110, USA;

  • 2 The CBR Institute for Biomedical Research, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA.

  • 3 Corresponding author.

    3 E-MAIL patrick.matthias{at}fmi.ch; FAX 41-61-697-39-76.

  • Supplemental material is available at http://www.genesdev.org.

  • Article is online at http://www.genesdev.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gad.461107

    • Received July 3, 2007.
    • Accepted October 22, 2007.
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