Plant toxin β-ODAP activates integrin β1 and focal adhesion: A critical pathway to cause neurolathyrism.

Neurolathyrism is a unique neurodegeneration disease caused by β-N-oxalyl-L-α, β- diaminopropionic (β-ODAP) present in grass pea seed (Lathyrus stativus L.) and its pathogenetic mechanism is unclear. This issue has become a critical restriction to take full advantage of drought-tolerant grass pea as an elite germplasm resource under climate change. We found that, in a human glioma cell line, β-ODAP treatment decreased mitochondrial membrane potential, leading to outside release and overfall of Ca from mitochondria to cellular matrix. Increased Ca in cellular matrix activated the pathway of ECM, and brought about the overexpression of β1 integrin on cytomembrane surface and the phosphorylation of focal adhesion kinase (FAK). The formation of high concentration of FA units on the cell microfilaments further induced overexpression of paxillin, and then inhibited cytoskeleton polymerization. This phenomenon turned to cause serious cell microfilaments distortion and ultimately cytoskeleton collapse. We also conducted qRT-PCR verification on RNA-sequence data using 8 randomly chosen genes of pathway enrichment, and confirmed that the data was statistically reliable. For the first time, we proposed a relatively complete signal pathway to neurolathyrism. This work would help open a new window to cure neurolathyrism, and fully utilize grass pea germplasm resource under climate change.