Intracellular protein glycosylation modulates insulin mediated lifespan in C. elegans

O-linked-β-N-acetylglucosamine (O-GlcNAc) modification is a regulatory, nuclear and cytoplasmic post-translational glycosylation of proteins associated with age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and type II diabetes. Global elevation of O-GlcNAc levels on intracellular proteins can induce insulin resistance, the hallmark of type II diabetes, in mammalian systems. In C. elegans, attenuation of the insulin-like signal transduction pathway increases adult lifespan of the nematode. We demonstrate that the O-GlcNAc cycling enzymes OGT and OGA, which add and remove O-GlcNAc respectively, modulate lifespan in C. elegans. Median adult lifespan is increased in an oga-1 deletion strain while median adult life span is decreased upon ogt-1 deletion. The O-GlcNAc-mediated effect on nematode lifespan is dependent on the FoxO transcription factor DAF-16. DAF-16 is a key factor in the insulin-like signal transduction pathway to regulate reproductive development, lifespan, stress tolerance, and dauer formation in C. elegans. Our data indicates that O-GlcNAc cycling selectively influences only a subset of DAF-16 mediated phenotypes, including lifespan and oxidative stress resistance. We performed an affinity purification of O-GlcNAc-modified proteins and observed that a high percentage of these proteins are regulated by insulin signaling and/or impact insulin pathway functional outcomes, suggesting that the O-GlcNAc modification may control downstream effectors to modulate insulin pathway mediated cellular processes.