Preprint Review Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Protein Syntheses and Autophagy: In Contrast or in Synchrony?

Version 1 : Received: 31 December 2020 / Approved: 6 January 2021 / Online: 6 January 2021 (14:32:22 CET)

How to cite: Dioguardi, F.; Chen Scarabelli, C.; Pasini, E.; Corsetti, G.; Scarabelli, T. Protein Syntheses and Autophagy: In Contrast or in Synchrony?. Preprints 2021, 2021010120. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202101.0120.v1 Dioguardi, F.; Chen Scarabelli, C.; Pasini, E.; Corsetti, G.; Scarabelli, T. Protein Syntheses and Autophagy: In Contrast or in Synchrony?. Preprints 2021, 2021010120. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202101.0120.v1

Abstract

Background. Sarcopenia, defined as the loss of skeletal muscle mass and function, is a major clinical problem in many chronic illnesses, in cancer and in the elderly. Exercise and adequate nutrition, peculiarly dependents on availability of essential amino acids, considered the primary strategies for prevention and treatment of protein synthetic deficits, affect both the efficient scavenging of aged and overused protein molecules and the renewal, by maintaining muscular protein synthesis. Many questions still remain about the regulation of protein syntheses and degradation. Degradation of inefficient proteins or organelles is performed by the sum of micro and macro-autophagy plus ubiquitin-proteasome system, activities known as proteostasis, necessary to preserve and promote protein masses and consequently, the body’s reserves. However, how protein synthesis is regulated, and how activation of the mTOR complex may modulate and transduce the flow of information provided by exercise and nutrition to balance proteostasis and syntheses, is far from being fully understood. We suggest that energy production and availability, thus also mitochondria, may have a pivotal role in synchronizing activity and functional outcomes of protein syntheses, and that those syntheses, since higly energy demanding, are main effectors of AMPK dependent autophagy activation by consuming ATP and producing AMP. Conclusion. While in normal conditions protein syntheses drive autophagy activation by decreasing ATP to AMP ratio, conversely autophagy may be inefficiently activated when chronic both low production and consumption of ATP would result in lowest concentrations of AMP, and therefore both blunted rates of protein syntheses and autophagy would be observed. We suggest that this functional hypothesis may explain sarcopenia in many pathological conditions , as in cancer or in aging muscles.

Keywords

mTOR; ATP; protein synthesis; autophagy; amino acids; nutrition; adipose tissue; muscle; sarcopenia; mitochondria

Subject

Biology and Life Sciences, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

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