High cholesterol level is essential for myelin membrane growth

Cholesterol in the mammalian brain is a risk factor for certain neurodegenerative diseases, raising the question of its normal function. In the mature brain, the highest cholesterol content is found in myelin. We therefore created mice that lack the ability to synthesize cholesterol in myelin-forming oligodendrocytes. Mutant oligodendrocytes survived, but CNS myelination was severely perturbed, and mutant mice showed ataxia and tremor. CNS myelination continued at a reduced rate for many months, and during this period, the cholesterol-deficient oligodendrocytes actively enriched cholesterol and assembled myelin with >70% of the cholesterol content of wild-type myelin. This shows that cholesterol is an indispensable component of myelin membranes and that cholesterol availability in oligodendrocytes is a rate-limiting factor for brain maturation.

Depletion of the squalene synthase (ERG9) gene does not impair growth of Candida glabrata in mice

Squalene synthase (farnesyl-diphosphate farnesyltransferase, EC 2.5. 1.21) is the first committed enzyme of the sterol biosynthesis pathway. Inhibitors of this enzyme have been intensively studied as potential antifungal agents. To assess the effect of deactivating squalene synthase on the growth of fungi in mice, we isolated the squalene synthase (ERG9) gene from the pathogenic fungus Candida glabrata and generated strains in which the CgERG9 gene was under the control of the tetracycline-regulatable promoter. Depletion of the ERG9 gene by doxycycline (DOX), a derivative of tetracycline, decreased the cell viability in laboratory media, whereas it did not affect cell growth in mice at all. The growth defect caused by DOX in laboratory media was suppressed by the addition of serum. Analyses of the sterol composition of the restored cells in serum-containing media suggest that the defect of ergosterol biosynthesis can be complemented by the incorporation of exogenous cholesterol into the cells. Thus, deactivation of squalene synthase did not affect fungal growth in mice, presumably because the cells were able to incorporate cholesterol from the serum. These results showed that squalene synthase could not be a suitable target of antifungals for the treatment of C. glabrata infection.

Embryonic lethality and defective neural tube closure in mice lacking squalene synthase

Squalene synthase (SS) catalyzes the reductive head-to-head condensation of two molecules of farnesyl diphosphate to form squalene, the first specific intermediate in the cholesterol biosynthetic pathway. We used gene targeting to knock out the mouse SS gene. The mice heterozygous for the mutation (SS+/-) were apparently normal. SS+/- mice showed 60% reduction in the hepatic mRNA levels of SS compared with SS+/+ mice. Consistently, the SS enzymatic activities were reduced by 50% in the liver and testis. Nevertheless, the hepatic cholesterol synthesis was not different between SS+/- and SS+/+ mice, and plasma lipoprotein profiles were not different irrespective of the presence of the low density lipoprotein receptor, indicating that SS is not a rate-limiting enzyme in the cholesterol biosynthetic pathway. The mice homozygous for the disrupted SS gene (SS-/-) were embryonic lethal around midgestation. E9.5-10.5 SS-/- embryos exhibited severe growth retardation and defective neural tube closure. The lethal phenotype was not rescued by supplementing the dams either with dietary squalene or cholesterol. We speculate that cholesterol is required for the development, particularly of the nervous system, and that the chorioallantoic circulatory system is not mature enough to supply the rapidly growing embryos with maternal cholesterol at this developmental stage.

Down-regulation of cholesterol biosynthesis in sitosterolemia: diminished activities of acetoacetyl-CoA thiolase, 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-CoA synthase, reductase, squalene synthase, and 7-dehydrocholesterol delta7-reductase in liver and mononuclear leukocytes

Sitosterolemia is a recessively inherited disorder characterized by abnormally increased plasma and tissue plant sterol concentrations. Patients have markedly reduced whole body cholesterol biosynthesis associated with suppressed hepatic, ileal, and mononuclear leukocyte 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A (HMG-CoA) reductase, the rate-controlling enzyme in cholesterol biosynthetic pathway, coupled with significantly increased low density lipoprotein (LDL) receptor expression. To investigate the mechanism of down-regulated cholesterol biosynthesis, we assayed several other key enzymes in the cholesterol biosynthetic pathway including acetoacetyl-CoA thiolase, HMG-CoA synthase, squalene synthase, and 7-dehydrocholesterol delta7-reductase activities in liver and freshly isolated mononuclear leukocytes from four sitosterolemic patients and 19 controls. Hepatic acetoacetyl-CoA thiolase, HMG-CoA synthase, reductase, and squalene synthase activities were significantly decreased (P < 0.05) -39%, -54%, -76%, and -57%, respectively, and 7-dehydrocholesterol delta7-reductase activity tended to be lower (-35%) in the sitosterolemic compared with control subjects. The reduced HMG-CoA synthase, reductase, and squalene synthase activities were also found in mononuclear leukocytes from a sitosterolemic patient. Thus, reduced cholesterol synthesis is caused not only by decreased HMG-CoA reductase but also by the coordinate down-regulation of entire pathway of cholesterol biosynthesis. These results suggest that inadequate cholesterol production in sitosterolemia is due to abnormal down-regulation of early, intermediate, and late enzymes in the cholesterol biosynthetic pathway rather than a single inherited defect in the HMG-CoA reductase gene.

Squalene synthase-deficient mutant of Chinese hamster ovary cells

Squalene synthase (farnesyldiphosphate:farnesyldiphosphate farnesyltransferase, EC 2.5.1.21) converts farnesyl pyrophosphate to squalene, the first metabolic step committed solely to the biosynthesis of sterols. Using a fluorescence-activated cell sorting technique designed to screen for cells defective in the regulated degradation of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A (HMG-CoA) reductase, we isolated a squalene synthase-deficient mutant of Chinese hamster ovary cells. The mutant cell line, designated SSD, exhibits less than 7% of the squalene synthase activity of the parental cell line, CHO-HMGal. Both the SSD and the parental cells stably express HMGal, a model protein for studying the regulated degradation of HMG-CoA reductase, which consists of the membrane domain of HMG-CoA reductase fused to bacterial beta-galactosidase (Skalnik, D. G., Narita, H., Kent, C., and Simoni, R. D. (1988) J. Biol. Chem. 263, 6836-6841). In this study, the regulatory effects of mevalonate and compactin on the activity levels of HMGal are substantially reduced in SSD cells as compared to the parental cell line. In lipid-poor medium, SSD cell growth is arrested. The rate of [3H]acetate incorporation into cholesterol for the mutant SSD cells is less than 2% of the rate for the parental cells. However, the incorporation of [3H] squalene into sterols is essentially wild type for SSD cells. When the mutant SSD cells are fed [3H]acetate, radioactivity accumulates in farnesol, much of which is secreted into the medium. By growing SSD cells in lipid-poor medium, a revertant cell type, designated SSR, was isolated. In every assay performed the revertant SSR cells exhibited a phenotype that was essentially wild type, demonstrating that the SSD mutant phenotype was the result of a single mutation.