Back

An acyltransferase protects Caenorhabditis elegans from thiol reductive stress through an autoinhibitory hypoxia response pathway

Ravi, R.; Singh, J.

2025-10-10 physiology
10.1101/2025.10.09.681334 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Cellular redox homeostasis depends on a finely tuned balance between oxidizing and reducing conditions, and disturbances in this balance lead to oxidative or reductive stress. While oxidative stress and its pathological outcomes are well studied, the molecular mechanisms underlying cellular responses to reductive stress remain poorly understood. Using Caenorhabditis elegans as a model, we investigate thiol reductive stress induced by dithiothreitol (DTT) and uncover a critical protective role for the hypoxia response pathway. We identify RHY-1, a membrane-associated acyltransferase and known negative regulator of the hypoxia-inducible factor HIF-1, as essential for survival under thiol reductive stress. Notably, rhy-1 is a direct transcriptional target of HIF-1, and overexpression of rhy-1 fully rescues the sensitivity of hif-1 loss-of-function mutants to DTT. We demonstrate that RHY-1 functions in an autoinhibitory feedback loop, where elevated RHY-1 levels suppress activation of the hypoxia response pathway even during reductive stress. Together, our findings establish RHY-1 as both a regulatory and effector component of the hypoxia response pathway that mediates cellular protection against thiol reductive stress.

Matching journals

The top 4 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.