More on Gadd45a and Muscle Atrophy
The protein gadd45a and its relatives in the same group are involved in many processes relevant to aging, and can be adjusted to modestly extend life in flies. Gadd45a is in particular implicated in muscle atrophy, a process that significantly contributes to frailty in aging, and here researchers continue to dig into the biochemistry of this relationship:
Skeletal muscle atrophy is a serious and highly prevalent condition that remains poorly understood at the molecular level. Previous work found that skeletal muscle atrophy involves an increase in skeletal muscle Gadd45a expression, which is necessary and sufficient for skeletal muscle fiber atrophy. However, the direct mechanism by which Gadd45a promotes skeletal muscle atrophy was unknown. To address this question, we biochemically isolated skeletal muscle proteins that associate with Gadd45a as it induces atrophy in mouse skeletal muscle fibers in vivo.
We found that Gadd45a interacts with multiple proteins in skeletal muscle fibers, including, most prominently, MEKK4, a MAP kinase kinase kinase that was not previously known to play a role in skeletal muscle atrophy. Furthermore, we found that, by forming a complex with MEKK4 in skeletal muscle fibers, Gadd45a increases MEKK4 protein kinase activity, which is both sufficient to induce skeletal muscle fiber atrophy and required for Gadd45a-mediated skeletal muscle fiber atrophy. Together, these results identify a direct biochemical mechanism by which Gadd45a induces skeletal muscle atrophy and provide new insight into the way that skeletal muscle atrophy occurs at the molecular level.