Suzuki A, Kakisaka K, Suzuki Y, Wang T, Takikawa Y. c-Jun N-terminal kinase-mediated Rubicon expression enhances hepatocyte lipoapoptosis and promotes hepatocyte ballooning. World J Gastroenterol 2016; 22(28): 6509-6519 [PMID: 27605885 DOI: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i28.6509]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Keisuke Kakisaka, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Division of Hepatology, Department of Internal Medicine, Iwate Medical University, 19-1 Uchimaru, Iwate, Morioka 0208505, Japan. keikaki@iwate-med.ac.jp
Research Domain of This Article
Gastroenterology & Hepatology
Article-Type of This Article
Basic Study
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Akiko Suzuki, Keisuke Kakisaka, Yuji Suzuki, Ting Wang, Yasuhiro Takikawa, Division of Hepatology, Department of Internal Medicine, Iwate Medical University, Morioka 0208505, Japan
Author contributions: Suzuki A performed in vivo and in vitro studies and wrote the paper; Kakisaka K designed the experiments. Suzuki Y and Wang T analyzed the data; Takikawa Y supervised the study and revised the paper; all authors drafted the article and made critical revisions related to the intellectual content of the manuscript, and approved the final version of the article to be published.
Supported byKAKENHI Grant, No. 16K21307.
Institutional animal care and use committee statement: All of the animal experiments were approved by the Animal Care and Use Committee of Iwate Medical University (Morioka, Japan; 25-025).
Conflict-of-interest statement: There is no conflict-of-interest.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Keisuke Kakisaka, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Division of Hepatology, Department of Internal Medicine, Iwate Medical University, 19-1 Uchimaru, Iwate, Morioka 0208505, Japan. keikaki@iwate-med.ac.jp
Telephone: +81-19-6515111 Fax: +81-19-6526664
Received: April 5, 2016 Peer-review started: April 6, 2016 First decision: May 12, 2016 Revised: May 24, 2016 Accepted: June 13, 2016 Article in press: June 13, 2016 Published online: July 28, 2016 Processing time: 107 Days and 17 Hours
Core Tip
Core tip: Autophagy is interrupted in both in vivo and in vitro non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) models, and impaired autophagy is mediated by Run domain Beclin-1 interacting and cysteine-rich containing (Rubicon) protein expression via c-Jun N-terminal kinase phosphorylation. Rubicon expression appears prior to apoptosis and enhances palmitate toxicity in the hepatocytes, and caspase-9 decreases Rubicon at the protein level during lipoapoptosis. Caspase-9 inhibition with Rubicon expression induces both hepatocyte enlargement and endoplasmic reticulum stress accumulation. The present study extends our knowledge on the precise balance between lipoapoptosis and autophagy via Rubicon expression in NASH and reveals a possible pathophysiology of ballooned hepatocytes in NASH.
