2. Academic Validation
  3. The T300A Crohn's disease risk polymorphism impairs function of the WD40 domain of ATG16L1

The T300A Crohn's disease risk polymorphism impairs function of the WD40 domain of ATG16L1

  • Nat Commun. 2016 Jun 8;7:11821. doi: 10.1038/ncomms11821.
Emilio Boada-Romero 1,  Inmaculada Serramito-Gómez 1,  María P Sacristán 1,  David L Boone 2,  Ramnik J Xavier 3 4,  Felipe X Pimentel-Muiños 1
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 Instituto de Biología Molecular y Celular del Cáncer (CSIC-Universidad de Salamanca), Centro de Investigación del Cáncer, Campus Miguel de Unamuno, Universidad de Salamanca, Salamanca 37007, Spain.
  • 2 Departments of Microbiology and Immunology, Indiana University School of Medicine-South Bend, South Bend, Indiana 46617, USA.
  • 3 Center for Computational and Integrative Biology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02114, USA.
  • 4 Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, USA.
PMID: 27273576 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms11821
Abstract

A coding polymorphism of human ATG16L1 (rs2241880; T300A) increases the risk of Crohn's disease and it has been shown to enhance susceptibility of ATG16L1 to Caspase cleavage. Here we show that T300A also alters the ability of the C-terminal WD40-repeat domain of ATG16L1 to interact with an amino acid motif that recognizes this region. Such alteration impairs the unconventional autophagic activity of TMEM59, a transmembrane protein that contains the WD40 domain-binding motif, and disrupts its normal intracellular trafficking and its ability to engage ATG16L1 in response to Bacterial infection. TMEM59-induced Autophagy is blunted in cells expressing the fragments generated by Caspase processing of the ATG16L1-T300A risk allele, whereas canonical Autophagy remains unaffected. These results suggest that the T300A polymorphism alters the function of motif-containing molecules that engage ATG16L1 through the WD40 domain, either by influencing this interaction under non-stressful conditions or by inhibiting their downstream autophagic signalling after caspase-mediated cleavage.

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