Publications by authors named "Melissa J Silvestrini"
Deregulated energy homeostasis represents a hallmark of aging and results from complex gene-by-environment interactions. Here, we discovered that reducing the expression of the gene ech-6 encoding enoyl-CoA hydratase remitted fat diet-induced deleterious effects on lifespan in Caenorhabditis elegans, while a basal expression of ech-6 was important for survival under normal dietary conditions. Lipidomics revealed that supplementation of fat in ech-6-silenced worms had marginal effects on lipid profiles, suggesting an alternative fat utilization for energy production.
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- Transcription factor HLH-30/TFEB regulates autophagy, and silencing the nuclear export protein XPO-1/XPO1 enhances autophagy by keeping HLH-30 in the nucleus.
- This increase in autophagy leads to advantages like better proteostasis and longer lifespan in C. elegans, requiring both HLH-30 and autophagy.
- The study suggests that inhibiting XPO1 can boost autophagy and potentially protect against neurodegeneration, indicating a conserved mechanism across different cell types.
Autophagy is a cellular catabolic process in which various cytosolic components are degraded. For example, autophagy can mediate lipolysis of neutral lipid droplets. In contrast, we here report that autophagy is required to facilitate normal levels of neutral lipids in C.
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