Adenylosuccinate lyase (ADSL) is a conserved homotetrameric enzyme that catalyzes the eighth reaction in the de novo purine synthesis (DNPS) pathway and also participates in the purine nucleotide cycle (Figure 1—figure supplement 1; Daignan-Fornier and Pinson, 2019). Mutations in ADSL cause adenylosuccinate lyase deficiency (ADSLD), an autosomal recessive disorder characterized by defects in purine metabolism and heterogeneous neurological phenotypes that include lack of eye-to-eye contact, auto-aggressive behavior, speech impairment, mild psychomotor delay, transient contact defects, autism spectrum disorder, epilepsy, and in some cases, microcephaly, encephalopathy, ataxia, or coma vigil (Jaeken and Van den Berghe, 1984; Jurecka et al., 2015). While the incidence of ADSLD has not been fully established, over 100 patients have been diagnosed to date and subcategorized based on their symptoms that range from premature death to milder developmental and behavioral disorders (Jurecka et al., 2015; http://www.adenylosuccinatelyasedeficiency.com/).

ADSLD can be diagnosed by detecting elevated levels of the substrates of ADSL, SAICAR (also referred to as SZMP), and S-AMP, as well as their dephosphorylated riboside forms, SAICAr and S-Ado, in bodily fluids (Jaeken and Van den Berghe, 1984). As normal levels of purine nucleotides were detected in serum from ADSLD patients, the accumulation of S-Ado, and particularly SAICAr, was proposed to play a role in the disease pathology (Jaeken and Van den Berghe, 1984; Jurecka et al., 2015; Stone et al., 1998).

In yeast, ADSL (Ade13) loss provokes genomic instability and is lethal (Daignan-Fornier and Pinson, 2019; Giaever et al., 2002; Pinson et al., 2009; Chen et al., 2016). Lethality in yeast can be rescued by deletion of a number of DNPS enzymes upstream of ADSL, or the transcription factors that regulate the pathway, indicating that the accumulation of metabolic intermediates, rather than impaired DNPS, underlies the toxicity (Daignan-Fornier and Pinson, 2019; Chen et al., 2016). In Caenorhabditis elegans, ADSL loss caused delayed growth, infertility, reduced life span, and locomotion defects. In some studies, growth, life span, and locomotion could be linked to the accumulation of SAICAR (Chen et al., 2016; Marsac et al., 2019; Fenton et al., 2017).

Perfusion of rat brains with SAICAr caused cellular attrition in the hippocampus, leading to the proposition that SAICAr accumulation is neurotoxic, although the potential mechanism remains unknown (Stone et al., 1998). In glucose-deprived cancer cells, SAICAR accumulation was shown to activate PKM2, and a number of other kinases, to promote cancer survival in glucose-limiting conditions, suggesting that purine metabolite accumulation could have distinct signaling outcomes that impact on cell behavior and fate during development (Keller et al., 2012; Keller et al., 2014; Yan et al., 2016). However, despite extensive enzymology and structural information, the underlying mechanisms by which neuropathology arises in ADSLD remain unknown.

To address the potential roles of ADSL deficiency in neurodevelopment, we systematically examined the consequences of ADSL depletion in diploid human cells and in vivo. We found that ADSL depletion in human epithelial cells impaired cell cycle progression, induced DNA damage signaling, and impaired primary ciliogenesis. Deletion of p53 or supplementation with nucleosides rescued cell cycle progression and DNA damage signaling, respectively. In contrast, ciliogenesis defects were unaffected by p53 status or nucleoside supplementation and could be reproduced by SAICAr supplementation or attenuated by the inhibition of phosphoribosylaminoimidazole carboxylase (PAICS), which is required to generate SAICAR/r upstream of ADSL. Depletion of ADSL in chicken or zebrafish embryos impaired neurogenesis and caused developmental defects. Both chicken and zebrafish embryos exhibited microcephaly, which is observed in some ADSLD patients, and increased DNA damage was evident in zebrafish. In addition, fish embryos displayed ciliopathy-related phenotypes and interventions to limit SAICAR accumulation-rescued impaired neurogenesis. Together, our results indicate that ADSL depletion causes context-dependent phenotypes associated with its role in both the purine nucleotide cycle and DNPS, which together impact neurodevelopment.

Despite a detailed understanding of the enzymology of DNPS and the purine nucleotide cycle, the specific cell and organismal effects underlying the complex etiology of ADSLD remain unclear. Our results uncovered multiple phenotypes associated with ADSL depletion in human RPE-1 cells, as well as developing chicken and zebrafish embryos (Appendix 1). These can largely be rescued by interventions that suppress the generation of metabolites in the DNPS pathway or restore purine levels, complementing defective DNPS or purine nucleotide pathway activity. DNA damage signaling was suppressed by nucleoside supplementation in human cells and zebrafish, suggesting that this was caused by purine deficiency (Figure 1A). In contrast, defects in primary ciliogenesis resulting from ADSL depletion were rescued by PAICS inhibitor or MTX treatment, but not nucleosides, and phenocopied by SAICAr administration. The inability to rescue these phenotypes with nucleoside supplementation indicated that they most likely resulted specifically from loss of ADSL, and potentially SAICAr accumulation, rather than a general deficiency in purine supply. As SAICAr levels were barely detectable in RPE-1, it could indicate that a very small amount of SAICAr is sufficient to provoke the phenotypes or that signaling elicited specifically from loss of the ADSL protein is responsible. In ADSL-depleted RPE-1 cells, we could also detect p53 activation and defects in cell cycle progression, in the absence of cell death or senescence, and these phenotypes were insensitive to nucleoside supplementation or DNPS modulation, indicating the involvement of additional pathways.

Microcephaly, which is present in a subset of more severe ADSLD cases (Jurecka et al., 2008; Jurecka et al., 2012; Mouchegh et al., 2007), was observed in zebrafish embryos following Adsl depletion. Similarly, ADSL depletion in chicken embryos led to a reduction in neural tube size. Together, the results suggest that they are potentially valuable models for understanding the etiology of microcephaly in ADSLD (Jurecka et al., 2015). DNA damage, p53 activation, and defects in cilia function, which we observed following ADSL depletion, have all been implicated in neurodevelopmental disorders, such as Seckel syndrome, which is associated with microcephaly (Stracker et al., 2020). In Seckel syndrome mice expressing hypomorphic, humanized alleles of Atr, replication stress and DNA damage preceded neuroprogenitor cell death (O’Driscoll et al., 2003; Murga et al., 2009). This was accompanied by extensive p53 activation, but co-deletion of p53 exacerbated the cellular and organismal phenotypes, indicating a protective effect of p53 induction. Mutations in centrosomal proteins, such as CENPJ/SAS4/CPAP or CEP63, were also implicated in Seckel syndrome (Al-Dosari et al., 2010; Sir et al., 2011). In contrast to mice expressing hypomorphic Atr, progenitor loss in mice with CEP63 or CENPJ/SAS4 deficiency resulted from mitotic delays and the activation of the USP28-53BP1-dependent mitotic surveillance pathway (Bazzi and Anderson, 2014; Insolera et al., 2014; Marjanović et al., 2015; McIntyre et al., 2012; Lin et al., 2020; Fong et al., 2016; Lambrus et al., 2016). In this case, the phenotype was completely rescued by p53 co-deletion, revealing p53-dependent cell death as a main driver of the phenotype. Despite some phenotypic similarities with Seckel syndrome at the cellular level, including replication stress and p53 activation, we did not detect increased cell death as a result of ADSL depletion. This indicated that the reduced cellularity caused by ADSL depletion occurs in a manner mechanistically distinct from Seckel syndrome driven by ATR deficiency or centrosome duplication defects.

GMPS (GMP synthase), an essential enzyme in the purine synthesis pathway (Figure 1—figure supplement 1), was identified as a target for p53 repression following p53 activation using Nutlin-3a (Holzer et al., 2017). In addition, GMPS was demonstrated to promote p53 stabilization in response to genotoxic stress in a manner that requires the USP7 ubiquitin protease (Reddy et al., 2014). While we cannot rule out a role for this pathway in p53 stabilization following ADSL depletion, we could not rescue p53 activation with nucleoside supplementation and induction of p53 via the GMPS pathway was demonstrated to induce cell death, which we did not observe clearly in any of the systems we analyzed.

In addition to p53-dependent and -independent cell death, defects in cilium removal and premature progenitor differentiation have also been clearly implicated in microcephaly in Seckel syndrome and primary microcephaly (Gabriel et al., 2016; Farooq et al., 2020). We examined the removal of cilia by adding back serum to serum-starved RPE-1 cells depleted for ADSL and observed normal rates of cilia removal (Figure 4—figure supplement 1G), suggesting that impaired cilia resorption was likely not impairing cell cycle exit and indirectly impacting ciliogenesis. Analysis of differentiation in RPE-1 cells depleted for ADSL also did not support a premature differentiation phenotype (Figure 1—figure supplement 2K), but we recognize that RPE-1 cells may not respond to purine depletion in the same way as neural progenitors or other cell types in vivo.

In RPE-1 and chicken embryos, we observed cell cycle delays following ADSL depletion, as well as an overall reduction in SOX2-positive progenitor cells in both in vivo systems. As a result, differentiated ELAVL3/4-positive cell numbers were also reduced in both chicken and fish systems. Cell cycle delay was further supported by the observation that, contrary to overall Sox2-positive cell numbers, the number of transfected, Sox2-positive cells in chicken embryos was increased relative to controls. In agreement with our findings, nutrient restriction was shown to arrest the proliferation of neural progenitors of Xenopus larvae and zebrafish reversibly in G2, suggesting that most of the cells were quiescent (McKeown and Cline, 2019), consistent with the lack of evidence for cell death or senescence in ADSL-depleted systems. While arrest in Xenopus progenitors did not require mTOR signaling, nutrient-dependent cell cycle reentry was mTOR dependent. Purine deficiency inhibits the mTORC1 pathway, which regulates protein synthesis in response to nutrient availability (Hoxhaj et al., 2017), and inactivation of mTORC1 results in microcephaly in mouse models, but this was attributed mainly to increased levels of cell death (Cloëtta et al., 2013). Thus, while we cannot rule out a role for dysregulated mTOR signaling in the phenotypes associated with ADSLD, the origin of microcephaly is likely to be mechanistically distinct to that in mTORC1-deficient mouse models. We therefore propose that the reduction in brain size resulting from ADSL depletion is largely due to the impaired cell cycle progression observed in SOX2-positive progenitors and delayed differentiation.

The molecular targets of SAICAR remain largely unclear, but its accumulation has been linked to activation of PKM2, and other kinases, in the context of glucose deficiency in cancer (Keller et al., 2012; Keller et al., 2014; Yan et al., 2016). Recent work also implicated ADSL in the activation of MYC, which plays a major role in controlling metabolism and proliferation in cancer cells (Zurlo et al., 2019). Considering that ciliogenesis is a highly regulated process and tightly coordinated with the cell cycle, modulation of central signaling pathways, including AKT and mTOR that control energetics and proliferation, may be one way by which SAICAr could affect cilia (Hoxhaj et al., 2017; Walia et al., 2019). In particular, AKT was shown to regulate a key step in ciliary vesicle formation and AKT activation exerts an inhibitory effect on ciliogenesis induced by serum starvation (Walia et al., 2019). We examined AKT activation following SAICAr treatment and did not observe any detectable increase, indicating that the ability of SAICAr to inhibit ciliogenesis occurs through a distinct mechanism, consistent with the fact that CP110 depletion, which occurs prior to vesicle formation, rescued ciliation in ADSL-depleted cells (Figure 5E). ADSL has also been identified as a proximal interactor of numerous centrosomal proteins, including CEP104, CEP128, CEP135, CEP152, CEP89, and centrobin, suggesting that it may play specific regulatory roles involving direct interactions or its enzymatic activity locally at centrosomes (Gupta et al., 2015). To address this, future work will be needed to determine the cellular interactomes of ADSL and SAICAr, and the signaling they elicit, to identify the disease-relevant targets.

To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of a specific purine metabolite impairing ciliogenesis. While ciliopathy-like features have not been described for the pathology of ADSLD, we observed a robust rescue of the neural progenitor population in zebrafish following MTX treatment, suggesting that SAICAr and its effects on cilia may be involved. Consistent with effects on cilia in vivo, we observed shorter cilia in the KV of zebrafish, as well as several ciliopathy-related phenotypes (Figures 6A–F ,–7A–G), consistent with impairment of ciliogenesis or cilia function in vivo. Adsl-depleted zebrafish also presented with defects in skull cartilage formation that is coordinated with brain size, in part through cilia-based sonic hedgehog signaling (Xavier et al., 2016). Primary cilia and Hedgehog signaling have well-established roles in regulating multiple progenitor populations in the developing brain (Bangs and Anderson, 2017). However, we also note that severe defects in primary cilia function or Hedgehog signaling cause more drastic reductions in progenitor proliferation and numbers than we observed in either system, potentially consistent with the milder ciliogenesis effects observed in vivo (Breunig et al., 2008; Han et al., 2008). Moreover, we used ADSL knockdown in our experimental systems, and it is currently unclear to what extent the observed ciliary defects would be recapitulated by ADSL mutations in patients and in what tissues and cell types. If ADSL deficiency would be less severe or only a subset of tissues would be affected, patients may not present classic and widespread ciliopathy features. Together, our work provides a cell-level analysis of ADSL deficiency, identifies specific cellular defects, and ascribes these to defects in specific steps of DNPS or the purine nucleotide cycle. Highlighting the complex etiology of ADSLD, our results add further support to the notion that SAICAr may play a key role in pathological outcomes and establish a framework for deciphering the underlying molecular mechanisms.

Summary of phenotypes identified in the systems used. Corresponding figures are indicated, as well as interventions that rescue or recapitulate the phenotype.

Multiple reaction monitoring transitions. See details in Materials and methods.

Most data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting source data files. Additional source data is available via Figshare, https://doi.org/10.25452/figshare.plus.c.5793614.

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Author details

1. Ilaria Dutto

   National Cancer Institute, Center for Cancer Research, Radiation Oncology Branch, Bethesda, United States

   Contribution

   Formal analysis, Investigation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review and editing

   Competing interests

   No competing interests declared

2. Julian Gerhards

   1. Institute for Research in Biomedicine, The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Barcelona, Spain
   2. Department of Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacogenomics, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

   Contribution

   Formal analysis, Investigation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review and editing

   Competing interests

   No competing interests declared

   "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-7005-1618

3. Antonio Herrera

   Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany

   Contribution

   Investigation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review and editing

   Competing interests

   No competing interests declared

   "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-6248-1001

4. Olga Souckova

   Department of Cell Biology, Instituto de Biología Molecular de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

   Contribution

   Formal analysis, Investigation

   Competing interests

   No competing interests declared

5. Václava Škopová

   Department of Cell Biology, Instituto de Biología Molecular de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

   Contribution

   Formal analysis, Investigation

   Competing interests

   No competing interests declared

6. Jordann A Smak

   Department of Paediatrics and Inherited Metabolic Disorders, First Faculty of Medicine, Charles University and General University Hospital in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

   Contribution

   Formal analysis, Investigation

   Competing interests

   No competing interests declared

7. Alexandra Junza

   1. Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Electronic Engineering, IISPV, Tarragona, Spain
   2. CIBER de Diabetes y Enfermedades Metabólicas Asociadas (CIBERDEM), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain

   Contribution

   Formal analysis, Investigation

   Competing interests

   No competing interests declared

8. Oscar Yanes

   1. Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Electronic Engineering, IISPV, Tarragona, Spain
   2. CIBER de Diabetes y Enfermedades Metabólicas Asociadas (CIBERDEM), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain

   Contribution

   Investigation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology

   Competing interests

   No competing interests declared

9. Cedric Boeckx

   1. ICREA, Barcelona, Spain
   2. Institute of Complex Systems (UBICS), Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
   3. Section of General Linguistics, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

   Contribution

   Formal analysis

   Competing interests

   No competing interests declared

   "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-8882-9718

10. Martin D Burkhalter

    Institute for Research in Biomedicine, The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Barcelona, Spain

    Contribution

    Formal analysis, Investigation

    Competing interests

    Passeig Lluís Companys is the name of the street in Barcelona that institution is on, and we don't want that info captured

    "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-8646-3131

11. Marie Zikánová

    Department of Cell Biology, Instituto de Biología Molecular de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Contribution

    Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Supervision, Writing – review and editing

    Competing interests

    No competing interests declared

12. Sebastian Pons

    Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany

    Contribution

    Formal analysis, Methodology, Resources, Supervision

    Competing interests

    No competing interests declared

13. Melanie Philipp

    1. Institute for Research in Biomedicine, The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Barcelona, Spain
    2. Department of Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacogenomics, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

    Contribution

    Investigation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Supervision, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review and editing

    Competing interests

    No competing interests declared

    "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-2714-965X

14. Jens Lüders

    National Cancer Institute, Center for Cancer Research, Radiation Oncology Branch, Bethesda, United States

    Contribution

    Formal analysis, Investigation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review and editing

    For correspondence

    jens.luders@irbbarcelona.org

    Competing interests

    No competing interests declared

    "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-9018-7977

15. Travis H Stracker

    1. National Cancer Institute, Center for Cancer Research, Radiation Oncology Branch, Bethesda, United States
    2. Department of Paediatrics and Inherited Metabolic Disorders, First Faculty of Medicine, Charles University and General University Hospital in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

    Contribution

    Formal analysis, Investigation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review and editing

    For correspondence

    travis.stracker@nih.gov

    Competing interests

    Reviewing editor, eLife

    "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-8650-2081

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