In this study, we examined the influence of the overexpression of wild-type (WT) and mutant-type (MT, A53T and A30P) α-synuclein on the autophagy in neuroblastoma SH-SY5Y cells under starvation, and then investigated the regulation of endogenous HMGB1 on the α-synuclein degradation and on the starvation-induced autophagy in the α-synuclein-overexpressed SH-SY5Y cells.
Marked dysregulations of microbial defense factors Ifit3 and Rsad2 were consistently observed upon five analyses: (1) Pink1 <sup>-/-</sup> primary neurons in the first weeks after brain dissociation, (2) aged Pink1 <sup>-/-</sup> midbrain with transgenic A53T-alpha-synuclein overexpression, (3) human neuroblastoma cells with PINK1-knockdown and murine Pink1 <sup>-/-</sup> embryonal fibroblasts undergoing acute starvation, (4) triggering mitophagy in these cells with trifluoromethoxy carbonylcyanide phenylhydrazone (FCCP), and (5) subjecting them to pathogenic RNA-analogue poly(I:C).
We investigated transcriptional changes in neuroblastoma cell lines transfected with either normal or mutant (A30P or A53T) alpha-synuclein using microarrays, with confirmation of selected genes by quantitative RT-PCR.