An Evolution-Guided Analysis Reveals a Multi-Signaling Regulation of Fas by Tyrosine Phosphorylation and its Implication in Human Cancers

PLoS Biol. 2016 Mar 4;14(3):e1002401. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002401. eCollection 2016 Mar.

Abstract

Demonstrations of both pro-apoptotic and pro-survival abilities of Fas (TNFRSF6/CD95/APO-1) have led to a shift from the exclusive "Fas apoptosis" to "Fas multisignals" paradigm and the acceptance that Fas-related therapies face a major challenge, as it remains unclear what determines the mode of Fas signaling. Through protein evolution analysis, which reveals unconventional substitutions of Fas tyrosine during divergent evolution, evolution-guided tyrosine-phosphorylated Fas proxy, and site-specific phosphorylation detection, we show that the Fas signaling outcome is determined by the tyrosine phosphorylation status of its death domain. The phosphorylation dominantly turns off the Fas-mediated apoptotic signal, while turning on the pro-survival signal. We show that while phosphorylations at Y232 and Y291 share some common functions, their contributions to Fas signaling differ at several levels. The findings that Fas tyrosine phosphorylation is regulated by Src family kinases (SFKs) and the phosphatase SHP-1 and that Y291 phosphorylation primes clathrin-dependent Fas endocytosis, which contributes to Fas pro-survival signaling, reveals for the first time the mechanistic link between SFK/SHP-1-dependent Fas tyrosine phosphorylation, internalization route, and signaling choice. We also demonstrate that levels of phosphorylated Y232 and Y291 differ among human cancer types and differentially respond to anticancer therapy, suggesting context-dependent involvement of Fas phosphorylation in cancer. This report provides a new insight into the control of TNF receptor multisignaling by receptor phosphorylation and its implication in cancer biology, which brings us a step closer to overcoming the challenge in handling Fas signaling in treatments of cancer as well as other pathologies such as autoimmune and degenerative diseases.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Amino Acid Sequence
  • Apoptosis
  • Endocytosis
  • Evolution, Molecular*
  • Humans
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Mutagenesis, Site-Directed
  • Neoplasms / metabolism*
  • Phosphorylation
  • Protein Structure, Tertiary
  • Protein Tyrosine Phosphatase, Non-Receptor Type 6 / metabolism*
  • fas Receptor / metabolism*
  • src-Family Kinases / metabolism*

Substances

  • fas Receptor
  • src-Family Kinases
  • PTPN6 protein, human
  • Protein Tyrosine Phosphatase, Non-Receptor Type 6

Grants and funding

This work was supported by institutional funds from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), and by grants from the Institut National du Cancer (INCa; PLBIO09-317); the University of Nice, the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-10-BLAN-1226; ANR-11-LABX-0028-01). KL was supported by funding from the Canceropole PACA, and LTN was supported by a scholarship from the ministry and education of training of the socialist republic of Vietnam. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.