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A coherent FOXO3-SNAI2 feed-forward loop in autophagy.

Xiaowei GuoZhuojie LiXiaojie ZhuMeixiao ZhanChenxi WuXiang DingKai PengWenzhe LiXianjue MaZhongwei LvLigong LuLei Xue
Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (2022)
SignificanceUnderstanding autophagy regulation is instrumental in developing therapeutic interventions for autophagy-associated disease. Here, we identified SNAI2 as a regulator of autophagy from a genome-wide screen in HeLa cells. Upon energy stress, SNAI2 is transcriptionally activated by FOXO3 and interacts with FOXO3 to form a feed-forward regulatory loop to reinforce the expression of autophagy genes. Of note, SNAI2-increased FOXO3-DNA binding abrogates CRM1-dependent FOXO3 nuclear export, illuminating a pivotal role of DNA in the nuclear retention of nucleocytoplasmic shuttling proteins. Moreover, a dFoxO-Snail feed-forward loop regulates both autophagy and cell size in Drosophila , suggesting this evolutionarily conserved regulatory loop is engaged in more physiological activities.
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