De novo cholesterol synthesis at the crossroads of adaptive response to extracellular stress through SREBP.

Cell sterol supply is subjected to tight negative feedback regulation through the SREBP pathway. Upon cholesterol depletion, SREBP transcription factors become activated by cleavage of a membrane bound precursor form, which stimulates the expression of the genes encoding proteins of the cholesterol synthesis pathway. In this paper, we discuss two situations of extracellular stress (hypoxia and heat shock) in which the cholesterol synthesis pathway and SREBPs are directly impacted to generate an adaptive response to cell damage. On one hand, the lack of oxygen in fission yeast Saccharomyces pombe induces a drop in cholesterol synthesis which in turn activates SREBP-mediated transcription. The presence of genes involved in the anaerobic growth program among SREBP target genes in fission yeast, indicates that SREBP behaves as an oxygen sensor, required for adaptive growth in low oxygen. On the other hand, upon heat shock in mammalian cells, SREBP-responsive heat shock proteins have been characterized, which were able to upregulate sterol synthesis by targeting the activity of HMG-CoA reductase, the rate limiting enzyme in this pathway. Although not yet proven, high rates of sterol synthesis can be viewed as an adaptive response to correct structural membrane damage and bilayer fluidification induced by thermal stress. Together these situations illustrate how the highly regulated SREBP pathway for the control of sterol synthesis can be used to achieve cell adaptive responses to extracellular stresses.