Evolutionarily conserved temperature dependency leads to loss of protein O-GlcNAc in mammalian hypothermia

O-N-acetylglucosaminylation (O-GlcNAcylation) is a conserved, non-canonical glycosylation of intracellular proteins suggested to regulate a wide spectrum of fundamental cell processes and stress responses. O-GlcNAc transferase (OGT) and O-GlcNAcase (OGA) add and remove, respectively, O-GlcNAc on protein serines and threonines. O-GlcNAcylation is thought to be primarily regulated by the availability of its substrate, UDP-GlcNAc, produced by the hexosamine biosynthetic pathway (HBP). We observed a body-wide loss of O-GlcNAcylated proteins in Bcs1l mutant mice, a model of mitochondrial complex III deficiency. UDP-GlcNAc precursors glutamine, UTP and acetyl-CoA were decreased in the mutant liver but, surprisingly, UDP-GlcNAc was not consistently decreased in the organs that showed low O-GlcNAc. Neither N-acetylglucosamine supplementation nor overexpression of the HBP rate-limiting enzyme GFPT1 restored the protein O-GlcNAc levels. The Bcs1l mutant mice become hypothermic and, interestingly, earlier evidence suggest that O-GlcNAcylation depends on ambient temperature in Drosophila embryos. We found that temperature determined O-GlcNAc abundance also in adult flies of tropical and boreal Drosophila species, in the poikilothermic vertebrate zebrafish, and in cultured mammalian cells. In cultured cells, the OGT-OGA protein ratio coincided with temperature and O-GlcNAc level, providing a regulatory mechanism. Pharmacological OGA inhibition decoupled the O-GlcNAc temperature dependency in cultured cells, as did an OGA null allele in Drosophila . In Bcs1l mutant mice, O-GlcNAc levels strongly correlated with body temperature. Increasing the mouse body temperature through transgenic expression of the heat-generating mitochondrial alternative oxidase (AOX) or housing at 35°C prevented the loss of O-GlcNAc. Pharmacological restoration of O-GlcNAc in the Bcs1l mutant mice produced minimal effects, suggesting that the bulk of O-GlcNAc is dispensable in mild hypothermia. Our findings imply an evolutionarily ancient role of protein O-GlcNAcylation in temperature adaptation and, instead of protein function-specific roles, argue for a global role of O-GlcNAc in temperature control of proteostasis.