Expression of autophagic and ubiquitin–proteasome proteins in the peripheral nervous system after nerve injury
Article Category: Brief communication (original)
Published Online: Jun 04, 2020
Page range: 173 - 178
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/abm-2019-0057
Keywords
© 2019 Sithiporn Agthong et al., published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.
Background
Autophagy and ubiquitin–proteasome (UPS) are two main degradation systems for intracellular proteins. They are essential for homeostasis of neurons during normal and pathological conditions, but their changes after nerve injury remain unclear.
Objective
To examine the protein expression of autophagy and UPS in the dorsal root ganglia (DRG), including intact and injured sciatic nerves after crush injury in rats.
Methods
Left sciatic nerve crush was done in all Wistar rats and the specimens were removed at 1, 3, 7, and 14 days after injury. Expression of the autophagic (Beclin-1 and p62) and UPS proteins [muscle ring finger-1 (MuRF1) and ubiquitinated proteins] was measured using Western blot analysis.
Results
Expression of p62 was significantly increased in the injured versus intact sciatic nerves on day 1 and day 7 (
Conclusions
These results indicated the induction of autophagy with accumulation of autophagosomes in the nerve, but not DRG, after nerve injury. Future studies on the effects of the autophagic changes and the precise activity of UPS in nerve trauma are crucial.