ambient temperature and confers heat resistance on ectotherm development

Effects of temperature on biological processes are complex. Diffusion is less affected than the diverse enzymatic reactions that have distinct individual temperature profiles. Hence thermal fluctuations pose a formidable challenge to ectothermic organisms in which body temperature is largely dictated by the ambient temperature. How cells in ectotherms cope with the myriad disruptive effects of temperature variation is poorly understood at the molecular level. Here we show that nucleocytoplasmic posttranslational modification of proteins with O-linked GlcNAc (O-GlcNAc) is closely correlated with ambient temperature during development of distantly related ectotherms ranging from the insect Drosophila melanogaster to the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans to the fish Danio rerio. Regulation seems to occur at the level of activity of the only two enzymes, O-GlcNAc transferase and O-GlcNAcase, that add and remove, respectively, this posttranslational modification in nucleus and cytoplasm. With genetic approaches in D. melanogaster and C. elegans, we demonstrate the importance of high levels of this posttranslational modification for successful development at elevated temperatures. Because many cytoplasmic and nuclear proteins in diverse pathways are O-GlcNAc targets, temperature-dependent regulation of this modification might contribute to an efficient coordinate adjustment of cellular processes in response to thermal change. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1322396111 Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-103800 Accepted Version Originally published at: Radermacher, Pablo T; Myachina, Faina; Bosshardt, Fritz; Pandey, Rahul; Mariappa, Daniel; Müller, HArno J; Lehner, Christian F (2014). O-GlcNAc reports ambient temperature and confers heat resistance on ectotherm development. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(15):5592-5597. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1322396111 O-GlcNAc reports ambient temperature and confers heat resistance on ectotherm development Pablo T. Radermacher, Faina Myachina, Fritz Bosshardt, Rahul Pandey, Daniel Mariappa, H.-Arno J. Müller, Christian F. Lehner a) Institute of Molecular Life Sciences (IMLS), University of Zurich, 8057 Zurich, Switzerland b) Institute of Genetics, University of Bayreuth, 95447 Bayreuth, Germany c) University of Dundee, College of Life Sciences, Cell and Developmental Biology, Dundee,