Summary: Replicative senescence limits the proliferation of somatic cells passaged in culture and may reflect cellular aging in vivo. The most widely used biomarker for senescent and aging cells is senescence‐associated β‐galactosidase (SA‐β‐gal), which is defined as β‐galactosidase activity detectable at pH 6.0 in senescent cells, but the origin of SA‐β‐gal and its cellular roles in senescence are not known. We demonstrate here that SA‐β‐gal activity is expressed from GLB1, the gene encoding lysosomal β‐D‐galactosidase, the activity of which is typically measured at acidic pH 4.5. Fibroblasts from patients with autosomal recessive G_M1‐gangliosidosis, which have defective lysosomal β‐galactosidase, did not express SA‐β‐gal at late passages even though they underwent replicative senescence. In addition, late passage normal fibroblasts expressing small‐hairpin interfering RNA that depleted GLB1 mRNA underwent senescence but failed to express SA‐β‐gal. GLB1 mRNA depletion also prevented expression of SA‐β‐gal activity in HeLa cervical carcinoma cells induced to enter a senescent state by repression of their endogenous human papillomavirus E7 oncogene. SA‐β‐gal induction during senescence was due at least in part to increased expression of the lysosomal β‐galactosidase protein. These results also indicate that SA‐β‐gal is not required for senescence.

In studying biological roles of interferon regulatory factor (IRF)-1 tumor suppressor in cervical carcinogenesis, we found that HPV E7 is functionally associated with IRF-1. Binding assays indicate a physical interaction between IRF-1 and HPV E7in vivo and in vitro. The carboxyl-terminal transactivation domain of IRF-1 was required for the interaction. Transient co-expression of E7 significantly inhibits the IRF-1-mediated activation of IFN-β promoter in NIH-3T3 cells. Co-transfection of E7 mutants reveals that the pRb-binding portion of E7 is necessary for the E7-mediated inactivation of IRF-1. It was next determined whether histone deacetylase (HDAC) is involved in the inactivation mechanism as recently suggested, where the carboxyl-terminal zinc finger domain of E7 associates with NURD complex containing HDAC. When trichostatin A, an inhibitor of HDAC, was treated, the repressing activity of E7 was released in a dose-dependent manner. Furthermore, the mutation of zinc finger abrogates such activity without effect on the interaction with IRF-1. These results suggest that HPV E7 interferes with the transactivation function of IRF-1 by recruiting HDAC to the promoter. The immune-promoting role of IRF-1 evokes the idea that our novel finding might be important for the elucidation of the E7-mediated immune evading mechanism that is frequently found in cervical cancer.

Active autophagy coupled with rapid mitochondrial fusion and fission constitutes an important mitochondrial quality control mechanism and is critical to cellular health. In our previous studies, we found that exposure of cells to nicotinamide causes a decrease in mitochondrial content and an increase in mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) by activating autophagy and inducing mitochondrial fragmentation. Here, we present evidence to show that the effect of nicotinamide is mediated through an increase of the [NAD(+)]/[NADH] ratio and the activation of SIRT1, an NAD(+)-dependent deacetylase that plays a role in autophagy flux. The [NAD(+)]/[NADH] ratio was inversely correlated with the mitochondrial content, and an increase in the ratio by the mobilization of the malate-aspartate shuttle resulted in autophagy activation and mitochondrial transformation from lengthy filaments to short dots. Furthermore, treatment of cells with SIRT1 activators, fisetin or SRT1720, induced similar changes in the mitochondrial content. Importantly, the activators induced mitochondrial fragmentation only when SIRT1 expression was intact. Meanwhile, MMP did not increase when the cells were treated with the activators, suggesting that the change in MMP is not induced by the mitochondrial turnover per se and that elevation of the [NAD(+)]/[NADH] ratio may activate additional mechanisms that cause MMP augmentation. Together, our results indicate that a metabolic state resulting in an elevated [NAD(+)]/[NADH] ratio can modulate mitochondrial quantity and quality via pathways that may include SIRT1-mediated mitochondrial autophagy.

Expression of the bovine papillomavirus E2 regulatory protein in human cervical carcinoma cell lines repressed expression of the resident human papillomavirus E6 and E7 oncogenes and within a few days caused essentially all of the cells to synchronously display numerous phenotypic markers characteristic of cells undergoing replicative senescence. This process was accompanied by marked but in some cases transient alterations in the expression of cell cycle regulatory proteins and by decreased telomerase activity. We propose that the human papillomavirus E6 and E7 proteins actively prevent senescence from occurring in cervical carcinoma cells, and that once viral oncogene expression is extinguished, the senescence program is rapidly executed. Activation of endogenous senescence pathways in cancer cells may represent an alternative approach to treat human cancers.