Proximity interactome of LC3B in normal growth conditions

LC3 (Light Chain 3) is a key player of autophagy, a major stress-responsive proteolysis pathway promoting cellular homeostasis. It coordinates the formation and maturation of autophagosomes and recruits cargo to be further degraded upon autophagosome-lysosome fusion. To orchestrate its functions, LC3 binds to multiple proteins from the autophagosomes inner and outer membranes, but the full extent of these interactions is not known. Moreover, LC3 has been increasingly reported in other cellular locations than the autophagosome, with cellular outcome not fully understood and not all related to autophagy. Furthermore, novel functions of LC3 as well as autophagy can occur in cells growing in a normal medium thus in non-stressed conditions. A better knowledge of the molecule in proximity to LC3 in normal growth conditions will improve the understanding of LC3 function in autophagy and in other cell biology function. Using an APEX2 based proteomic approach, we have detected 407 proteins in proximity to the well-characterised LC3B isoform in non-stress conditions. These include known and novel LC3B proximity proteins, associated with various cell localisation and biological functions. Sixty-nine of these proteins contain a putative LIR (LC3 Interacting Region) including 41 not reported associated to autophagy. Several APEX2 hits were validated by co-immunoprecipitation and co-immunofluorescence. This study uncovers the LC3B global interactome and reveals novel LC3B interactors, irrespective of LC3B localisation and function. This knowledge could be exploited to better understand the role of LC3B in autophagy and non-autophagy cellular processes.