Project description:Macrophage-mediated inflammation drives various lung diseases, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). COPD macrophages have dysfunctional mitochondrial metabolism and function which lead to a chronic inflammatory lung environment. However, the factors regulating this altered metabolism have not been elucidated. Adenine nucleotide translocase 1 (ANT1) is a mitochondrial ATP transporter critical to mitochondrial metabolism. We demonstrate that human alveolar macrophages from patients with moderate COPD (GOLD stage 2) have reduced ANT1 expression while macrophages from very severe COPD (GOLD stage 4) has elevated ANT1 compared to normal control subjects. Ant1-deficient mice were protected against cigarette smoke (CS)-induced emphysema with failure of recruited immune cells to migrate into alveoli. Ant1-null alveolar macrophages had reduced ATP production and mitochondrial respiration, upregulated fewer inflammatory pathways after CS and reduced migratory capacity. Conditional Ant1 knockout in Cx3cr1-positive monocytes and adoptive transfer of Ant1-deficient bone marrow into CS-treated mice phenocopied the migratory defect in the lung. Our data indicate that ANT1 is a critical regulator of lung macrophage inflammatory signaling and CS-triggered cell migration in the lung, suggesting that metabolic modulation may be a promising therapeutic avenue for COPD
Project description:Macrophage-mediated inflammation drives various lung diseases, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). COPD macrophages have dysfunctional mitochondrial metabolism and function which lead to a chronic inflammatory lung environment. However, the factors regulating this altered metabolism have not been elucidated. Adenine nucleotide translocase 1 (ANT1) is a mitochondrial ATP transporter critical to mitochondrial metabolism. We demonstrate that human alveolar macrophages from patients with moderate COPD (GOLD stage 2) have reduced ANT1 expression while macrophages from very severe COPD (GOLD stage 4) has elevated ANT1 compared to normal control subjects. Ant1-deficient mice were protected against cigarette smoke (CS)-induced emphysema with failure of recruited immune cells to migrate into alveoli. Ant1-null alveolar macrophages had reduced ATP production and mitochondrial respiration, upregulated fewer inflammatory pathways after CS and reduced migratory capacity. Conditional Ant1 knockout in Cx3cr1-positive monocytes and adoptive transfer of Ant1-deficient bone marrow into CS-treated mice phenocopied the migratory defect in the lung. Our data indicate that ANT1 is a critical regulator of lung macrophage inflammatory signaling and CS-triggered cell migration in the lung, suggesting that metabolic modulation may be a promising therapeutic avenue for COPD
Project description:Mitochondrial biogenesis requires the import of >1,000 mitochondrial preproteins from the cytosol. Most studies on mitochondrial protein import are focused on the core import machinery. Whether and how the biophysical properties of substrate preproteins affect overall import efficiency is underexplored. Here, we show that protein traffic into mitochondria can be disrupted by amino acid substitutions in a single substrate preprotein. Pathogenic missense mutations in adenine nucleotide translocase 1 (Ant1), and its yeast homolog Aac2, cause the protein to accumulate along the protein import pathway, thereby obstructing general protein translocation into mitochondria. This impairs mitochondrial respiration, cytosolic proteostasis and cell viability independent of Ant1’s nucleotide transport activity. The mutations act synergistically, as double mutant Aac2/Ant1 cause severe clogging primarily at the Translocase of the Outer Membrane (TOM) complex. This confers extreme toxicity in yeast. In mice, expression of a super-clogger Ant1 variant led to neurodegeneration and an age-dependent dominant myopathy that phenocopy Ant1-induced human disease, suggesting clogging as a mechanism of disease. More broadly, this work implies the existence of uncharacterized amino acid requirements for mitochondrial carrier proteins to avoid clogging and subsequent disease.