Qi Bin, Kniazeva Marina, Han Min
Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, United States.
Elife. 2017 Jun 1;6:e26243. doi: 10.7554/eLife.26243.
To survive challenging environments, animals acquired the ability to evaluate food quality in the intestine and respond to nutrient deficiencies with changes in food-response behavior, metabolism and development. However, the regulatory mechanisms underlying intestinal sensing of specific nutrients, especially micronutrients such as vitamins, and the connections to downstream physiological responses in animals remain underexplored. We have established a system to analyze the intestinal response to vitamin B (VB2) deficiency in , and demonstrated that VB2 level critically impacts food uptake and foraging behavior by regulating specific protease gene expression and intestinal protease activity. We show that this impact is mediated by TORC1 signaling through reading the FAD-dependent ATP level. Thus, our study in live animals uncovers a VB2-sensing/response pathway that regulates food-uptake, a mechanism by which a common signaling pathway translates a specific nutrient signal into physiological activities, and the importance of gut microbiota in supplying micronutrients to animals.
为了在具有挑战性的环境中生存，动物获得了在肠道中评估食物质量的能力，并通过食物反应行为、新陈代谢和发育的变化来应对营养缺乏。然而，肠道对特定营养素，尤其是维生素等微量营养素的感知的调节机制，以及与动物下游生理反应的联系仍未得到充分探索。我们建立了一个系统来分析线虫对维生素B2（VB2）缺乏的肠道反应，并证明VB2水平通过调节特定蛋白酶基因表达和肠道蛋白酶活性，对食物摄取和觅食行为产生关键影响。我们表明，这种影响是由TORC1信号通过读取FAD依赖的ATP水平介导的。因此，我们在活体动物中的研究揭示了一条调节食物摄取的VB2感知/反应途径，一种将特定营养信号转化为生理活动的常见信号通路机制，以及肠道微生物群在为动物提供微量营养素方面的重要性。
