Research Paper Volume 12, Issue 7 pp 5977—5991
Nrf2 deficiency promotes the increasing trend of autophagy during aging in skeletal muscle: a potential mechanism for the development of sarcopenia
- 1 Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China
- 2 Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, Shanghai Tenth People’s Hospital Affiliated to Tongji University, Shanghai, China
- 3 The Second People’s Hospital of Wuhu, Wuhu, China
- 4 Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China
- 5 Department of Pancreatitis Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China
Received: October 20, 2019 Accepted: March 2, 2020 Published: April 3, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.102990How to Cite
Copyright © 2020 Huang et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
This study aims to explore the impact of nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) deficiency on skeletal muscle autophagy and the development of sarcopenia. LC3b, P62, Bnip3, Lamp-1, and AMPK protein levels were measured in muscle from young, middle-aged, old Nrf2−/− (knockout, KO) mice and age-matched wild-type (WT) C57/BL6 mice. Autophagy flux was measured in young WT, young KO, old WT, old KO mice, using colchicine as autophagy inhibitor. There was a trend of higher accumulation of LC3b-II, P62, Bnip3, Lamp-1 induced by colchicine in old WT mice compared with young WT mice. Colchicine induced a significantly higher accumulation of LC3b-II, P62, Bnip3, Lamp-1 in KO mice compared with WT mice, both in the young and old groups. AMPK and reactive oxygen species (ROS) were unregulated following Nrf2 KO and increasing age, which was consistent with the increasing trend of autophagy flux following Nrf2 KO and increasing age. Nrf2 KO and increasing age caused decreased cross-sectional area of extensor digitorum longus and soleus muscles. We concluded that Nrf2 deficiency and increasing age may activate AMPK and ROS signals to cause excessive autophagy activation in skeletal muscle, which can be a potential mechanism for the development of sarcopenia.