Institute of Biomedicine, University of Eastern Finland, P.O. Box 1627, 70211 Kuopio, Finland.
Cell Mol Life Sci. 2011 Oct;68(19):3219-32. doi: 10.1007/s00018-011-0627-4. Epub 2011 Jan 21.
Small ubiquitin-related modifiers (SUMOs) are important regulator proteins. Caenorhabditis elegans contains a single SUMO ortholog, SMO-1, necessary for the reproduction of C. elegans. In this study, we constructed transgenic C. elegans strains expressing human SUMO-1 under the control of pan-neuronal (aex-3) or pan-muscular (myo-4) promoter and SUMO-2 under the control of myo-4 promoter. Interestingly, muscular overexpression of SUMO-1 or -2 resulted in morphological changes of the posterior part of the nematode. Movement, reproduction and aging of C. elegans were perturbed by the overexpression of SUMO-1 or -2. Genome-wide expression analyses revealed that several genes encoding components of SUMOylation pathway and ubiquitin-proteasome system were upregulated in SUMO-overexpressing nematodes. Since muscular overexpression of SMO-1 also brought up reproductive and mobility perturbations, our results imply that the phenotypes were largely due to an excess of SUMO, suggesting that a tight control of SUMO levels is important for the normal development of multicellular organisms.
小泛素相关修饰物（SUMOs）是重要的调节蛋白。秀丽隐杆线虫含有一个单一的 SUMO 直系同源物 SMO-1，它是秀丽隐杆线虫繁殖所必需的。在这项研究中，我们构建了表达人 SUMO-1 的转基因秀丽隐杆线虫品系，其表达受全神经元（aex-3）或全肌肉（myo-4）启动子的控制，SUMO-2 受 myo-4 启动子的控制。有趣的是，SUMO-1 或 -2 的肌肉过表达导致线虫后体形态发生变化。SUMO-1 或 -2 的过表达干扰了秀丽隐杆线虫的运动、繁殖和衰老。全基因组表达分析显示，编码 SUMOylation 途径和泛素-蛋白酶体系统组件的几个基因在 SUMO 过表达线虫中上调。由于 SMO-1 的肌肉过表达也带来了生殖和运动障碍，我们的结果表明这些表型主要归因于 SUMO 的过量，这表明对 SUMO 水平的严格控制对多细胞生物的正常发育很重要。
