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Research Paper|Volume 11, Issue 15|pp 5726—5743

Conserved roles of glucose in suppressing reactive oxygen species-induced cell death and animal survival

Congrong Wang1, Yinan Zhang2, Fengwen Li2, Yuehua Wei3
  • 1Shanghai East Hospital, Tongji University School of Medicine, Department of Endocrinology and Metabolic Disease, Translational Medical Center for Stem Cell Therapy, Shanghai, China
  • 2Shanghai Jiao Tong University Affiliated Sixth People's Hospital, The Metabolic Diseases Biobank, Center for Translational Medicine, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Diabetes, Shanghai, China
  • 3Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, School of Medicine, Shanghai, China
* Equal contribution
Received: June 19, 2019Accepted: August 3, 2019Published: August 12, 2019
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.102155

Copyright © 2019 Wang et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 3.0 License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Carbohydrate overconsumption increases blood glucose levels, which contributes to the development of various diseases including obesity and diabetes. It is generally believed that high glucose metabolism increases cellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels, damages insulin-secreting cells and leads to age-associated diabetic phenotypes. Here we find that in contrast, high glucose suppresses ROS production induced by paraquat in both mammalian cells and the round worm C. elegans. The role of glucose in suppressing ROS is further supported by glucose’s ability to alleviate paraquat’s toxicity on C. elegans development. Consistently, we find that the ROS-regulated transcription factor SKN-1 is inactivated by glucose. As a result, the ROS/SKN-1-dependent lifespan extension observed in paraquat-treated animals, mitochondrial respiration mutant isp-1 and germline-less mutant glp-1 are all suppressed by glucose. Our study reveals an unprecedented interaction of glucose with ROS, which could have significant impact on our current understanding of glucose- and ROS-related diseases.