Retinoblastoma protein promotes oxidative phosphorylation through upregulation of glycolytic genes in oncogene-induced senescent cells

Metabolism is tightly coupled with the process of aging, and tumorigenesis. However, the mechanisms regulating metabolic properties in different contexts remain unclear. Cellular senescence is widely recognized as an important tumor suppressor function and accompanies metabolic remodeling characterized by increased mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS). Here we showed retinoblastoma (RB) is required for the increased OXPHOS in oncogene-induced senescent (OIS) cells. Combined metabolic and gene expression profiling revealed that RB mediated activation of the glycolytic pathway in OIS cells, causing upregulation of several glycolytic genes and concomitant increases in the levels of associated metabolites in the glycolytic pathway. Knockdown of these genes by small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) resulted in decreased mitochondrial respiration, suggesting that RB-mediated glycolytic gene activation promotes metabolic flux into the OXPHOS pathway. These results suggest that coordinate transcriptional activation of metabolic genes by RB enables OIS cells to maintain metabolically bivalent states that both glycolysis and OXPHOS are highly active. Collectively, our findings demonstrated a previously unrecognized function of RB in OIS cells.

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Takebayashi S, Tanaka H, Hino S, Nakatsu Y, Igata T, Sakamoto A, Narita M, Nakao M