CHIP promotes Wnt signaling and regulates Arc stability by recruiting and polyubiquitinating LEF1 or Arc

The carboxyl terminus of Hsc70-interacting protein (CHIP), an E3 ubiquitin ligase, participates in many cellular processes such as protein degradation, trafficking, autophagy, apoptosis, and multiple signaling transductions. The mutant of CHIP (p.T246M) causes the spinocerebellar autosomal recessive 16 (SCAR16), a neurodegenerative disease characterized by spinocerebellar atrophy. Previous studies have shown that Wnt signaling and activity-regulated cytoskeleton-associated protein (Arc) play important roles in neurodegenerative diseases. However, the mechanisms by which CHIP regulates Wnt signaling and the stability of Arc that may affect SCAR16 are still unclear. We show that overexpression of CHIP promoted the activation of Wnt signaling, and enhanced the interaction between LEF1 and β-catenin through heightening the K63-linked polyubiquitin chains attached to LEF1, while the knockdown of CHIP had the opposite effect. Moreover, we verified that Wnt signaling was inhibited in the rat models of SCAR16 induced by the CHIP (p.T246M) mutant. CHIP also accelerated the degradation of Arc and regulated the interaction between Arc and GSK3β by heightening the K48- or K63-linked polyubiquitin chains, which further potentiated the interaction between GSK3β and β-catenin. Our data identify that CHIP is an undescribed regulator of Wnt signaling and Arc stability which may be related to the occurrence of SCAR16.