Endoplasmic reticulum stress and the protein degradation system in ophthalmic diseases

Jing-Yao Song; Xue-Guang Wang; Zi-Yuan Zhang; Lin Che; Bin Fan; Guang-Yu Li

doi:10.7717/peerj.8638

Endoplasmic reticulum stress and the protein degradation system in ophthalmic diseases

PeerJ. 2020 Feb 20:8:e8638. doi: 10.7717/peerj.8638. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Jing-Yao Song¹, Xue-Guang Wang², Zi-Yuan Zhang¹, Lin Che¹, Bin Fan¹, Guang-Yu Li¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Ophthalmology, Second Hospital of Jilin University, ChangChun, China.
² Department of Traumatic Orthopedics, Third People's Hospital of Jinan, Jinan, China.

Abstract

Objective: Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress is involved in the pathogenesis of various ophthalmic diseases, and ER stress-mediated degradation systems play an important role in maintaining ER homeostasis during ER stress. The purpose of this review is to explore the potential relationship between them and to find their equilibrium sites.

Design: This review illustrates the important role of reasonable regulation of the protein degradation system in ER stress-mediated ophthalmic diseases. There were 128 articles chosen for review in this study, and the keywords used for article research are ER stress, autophagy, UPS, ophthalmic disease, and ocular.

Data sources: The data are from Web of Science, PubMed, with no language restrictions from inception until 2019 Jul.

Results: The ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS) and autophagy are important degradation systems in ER stress. They can restore ER homeostasis, but if ER stress cannot be relieved in time, cell death may occur. However, they are not independent of each other, and the relationship between them is complementary. Therefore, we propose that ER stability can be achieved by adjusting the balance between them.

Conclusion: The degradation system of ER stress, UPS and autophagy are interrelated. Because an imbalance between the UPS and autophagy can cause cell death, regulating that balance may suppress ER stress and protect cells against pathological stress damage.

Keywords: Autophagy; ER stress; Ocular; Ophthalmic disease; UPS.

Grants and funding

The study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81570864) and the Natural Science Foundation of Jilin Province (No. 20160101004JC; No. 20160414045GH; No. 2016J041). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.