Nuclear Hormone Receptor NHR-49 acts in parallel with HIF-1 to promote hypoxia adaptation in Caenorhabditis elegans

  1. Kelsie RS Doering
  2. Xuanjin Cheng
  3. Luke Milburn
  4. Ramesh Ratnappan
  5. Arjumand Ghazi
  6. Dana L Miller
  7. Stefan Taubert  Is a corresponding author
  1. University of British Columbia, Canada
  2. University of Washington, United States
  3. University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, United States

Abstract

Caenorhabditis elegans Nuclear Hormone Receptor NHR-49, an orthologue of mammalian Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor alpha (PPARα). We show that nhr-49 is required for animal survival in hypoxia and is synthetic lethal with hif-1 in this context, demonstrating that these factors act in parallel. RNA-seq analysis shows that in hypoxia nhr-49 regulates a set of genes that are hif-1-independent, including autophagy genes that promote hypoxia survival. We further show that Nuclear Hormone Receptor nhr-67 is a negative regulator and Homeodomain-interacting Protein Kinase hpk-1 is a positive regulator of the NHR-49 pathway. Together, our experiments define a new, essential hypoxia response pathway that acts in parallel with the well-known HIF-mediated hypoxia response.

Data availability

RNA-seq data have been deposited at NCBI Gene Expression Omnibus (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/) under the record GSE166788.All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and Supplementary Tables. Raw data points from each N are shown in figures where-ever possible. See transparent reporting form for details.

The following data sets were generated
The following previously published data sets were used

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Kelsie RS Doering

    Graduate Program in Medical Genetics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Xuanjin Cheng

    Department of Medical Genetics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Luke Milburn

    Department of Biochemistry, University of Washington, Seattle, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Ramesh Ratnappan

    Department of Pediatrics, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-7055-9043
  5. Arjumand Ghazi

    Department of Pediatrics, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  6. Dana L Miller

    Department of Biochemistry, University of Washington, Seattle, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-3983-0493
  7. Stefan Taubert

    Graduate Program in Medical Genetics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
    For correspondence
    taubert@cmmt.ubc.ca
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-2432-7257

Funding

National Institutes of Health (R56AG066682)

  • Arjumand Ghazi

BC Children's Hospital Foundation

  • Stefan Taubert

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (RGPIN-2018-05133)

  • Stefan Taubert

National Institutes of Health (R01AG051659)

  • Arjumand Ghazi

Cancer Research Society (22727)

  • Stefan Taubert

BC Children's Hospital Foundation

  • Kelsie RS Doering

Canada Research Chairs

  • Stefan Taubert

National Institutes of Health (R01AG044378)

  • Dana L Miller

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada

  • Kelsie RS Doering

Canadian Institutes of Health Research (PJT-153199)

  • Stefan Taubert

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Copyright

© 2022, Doering et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

Metrics

  • 2,263
    views
  • 285
    downloads
  • 17
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Kelsie RS Doering
  2. Xuanjin Cheng
  3. Luke Milburn
  4. Ramesh Ratnappan
  5. Arjumand Ghazi
  6. Dana L Miller
  7. Stefan Taubert
(2022)
Nuclear Hormone Receptor NHR-49 acts in parallel with HIF-1 to promote hypoxia adaptation in Caenorhabditis elegans
eLife 11:e67911.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.67911

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.67911

Further reading

    1. Chromosomes and Gene Expression
    Jake VanBelzen, Bennet Sakelaris ... Jason H Brickner
    Research Article

    Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP-seq) is the most common approach to observe global binding of proteins to DNA in vivo. The occupancy of transcription factors (TFs) from ChIP-seq agrees well with an alternative method, chromatin endogenous cleavage (ChEC-seq2). However, ChIP-seq and ChEC-seq2 reveal strikingly different patterns of enrichment of yeast RNA polymerase II (RNAPII). We hypothesized that this reflects distinct populations of RNAPII, some of which are captured by ChIP-seq and some of which are captured by ChEC-seq2. RNAPII association with enhancers and promoters - predicted from biochemical studies - is detected well by ChEC-seq2 but not by ChIP-seq. Enhancer/promoter-bound RNAPII correlates with transcription levels and matches predicted occupancy based on published rates of enhancer recruitment, preinitiation assembly, initiation, elongation, and termination. The occupancy from ChEC-seq2 allowed us to develop a stochastic model for global kinetics of RNAPII transcription which captured both the ChEC-seq2 data and changes upon chemical-genetic perturbations to transcription. Finally, RNAPII ChEC-seq2 and kinetic modeling suggests that a mutation in the Gcn4 transcription factor that blocks interaction with the NPC destabilizes promoter-associated RNAPII without altering its recruitment to the enhancer.

    1. Chromosomes and Gene Expression
    2. Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Maruti Nandan Rai, Qing Lan ... Koon Ho Wong
    Research Article Updated

    Candida glabrata can thrive inside macrophages and tolerate high levels of azole antifungals. These innate abilities render infections by this human pathogen a clinical challenge. How C. glabrata reacts inside macrophages and what is the molecular basis of its drug tolerance are not well understood. Here, we mapped genome-wide RNA polymerase II (RNAPII) occupancy in C. glabrata to delineate its transcriptional responses during macrophage infection in high temporal resolution. RNAPII profiles revealed dynamic C. glabrata responses to macrophages with genes of specialized pathways activated chronologically at different times of infection. We identified an uncharacterized transcription factor (CgXbp1) important for the chronological macrophage response, survival in macrophages, and virulence. Genome-wide mapping of CgXbp1 direct targets further revealed its multi-faceted functions, regulating not only virulence-related genes but also genes associated with drug resistance. Finally, we showed that CgXbp1 indeed also affects fluconazole resistance. Overall, this work presents a powerful approach for examining host-pathogen interaction and uncovers a novel transcription factor important for C. glabrata’s survival in macrophages and drug tolerance.