Oxidative damage to specific proteins in replicative and chronological-aged Saccharomyces cerevisiae: common targets and prevention by calorie restriction.

Oxidative modifications of cellular components have been described as one of the main contributions to aged phenotype. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, two distinct life spans can be considered, replicative and chronological. The relationship between both aging models is still not clear despite suggestions that these phenomena may be related. In this work, we show that replicative and chronological-aged yeast cells are affected by an oxidative stress situation demonstrated by increased protein carbonylation when compared with young cells. The data on the identification of these oxidatively modified proteins gives clues to better understand cellular dysfunction that occurs during aging. Strikingly, although in both aging models metabolic differences are important, major targets are almost the same. Common targets include stress resistance proteins (Hsp60 and Hsp70) and enzymes involved in glucose metabolism such as enolase, glyceraldehydes-3-P dehydrogenase, fructose-1,6-biphosphate aldolase, pyruvate decarboxylase, and alcohol dehydrogenase. In both aging models, calorie restriction results in decreased damage to these proteins. In addition, chronological-aged cells grown under glucose restriction displayed lowered levels of lipid peroxidation product lipofuscin. Intracellular iron concentration is kept almost unchanged, whereas in non-restricted cells, the values increase up 4-5 times. The pro-oxidant effects of such increased iron concentration would account for the damage observed. Also, calorie-restricted cells show undamaged catalase, which clearly appears carbonylated in cells grown at a high glucose concentration. These results may explain lengthening of the viability of chronological-aged cells and could have an important role in replicative life span extension by calorie restriction.