RESEARCH ARTICLE TFEB/Mitf links impaired nuclear import to autophagolysosomal dysfunction in C9- ALS Kathleen M Cunningham1, Kirstin Maulding1, Kai Ruan2, Mumine Senturk3, Jonathan C Grima4,5, Hyun Sung2, Zhongyuan Zuo6, Helen Song2, Junli Gao7, Sandeep Dubey2, Jeffrey D Rothstein1,2,4,5, Ke Zhang7, Hugo J Bellen3,6,8,9,10, Thomas E Lloyd1,2,5* 1Cellular and Molecular Medicine Program, School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, United States; 2Department of Neurology, School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, United States; 3Program in Developmental Biology, Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), Houston, United States; 4Brain Science Institute, School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, United States; 5Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience, School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, United States; 6Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, BCM, Houston, United States; 7Department of Neuroscience, Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, United States; 8Department of Neuroscience, BCM, Houston, United States; 9Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute, Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston, United States; 10Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Houston, United States Abstract Disrupted nucleocytoplasmic transport (NCT) has been implicated in neurodegenerative disease pathogenesis; however, the mechanisms by which disrupted NCT causes neurodegeneration remain unclear. In a Drosophila screen, we identified ref(2)P/p62, a key regulator of autophagy, as a potent suppressor of neurodegeneration caused by the GGGGCC hexanucleotide repeat expansion (G4C2 HRE) in C9orf72 that causes amyotrophic lateral sclerosis *For correspondence:
[email protected] (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). We found that p62 is increased and forms ubiquitinated aggregates due to decreased autophagic cargo degradation. Immunofluorescence and electron Competing interest: See microscopy of Drosophila tissues demonstrate an accumulation of lysosome-like organelles that page 18 precedes neurodegeneration.