Mechanism of ER stress-mediated ER-phagy by CdTe-QDs in yeast cells

Endoplasmic reticulum autophagy (ER-phagy) is an important strategy for cells against ER stress and maintain ER homeostasis. ER stress is considered as a potential toxicity of nanoparticles, but only a few studies have explored whether the nanoparticles-induced ER stress can trigger ER-phagy, and the precise molecular mechanism of ER-phagy mediated by nanoparticle-induced ER stress is still poorly understood. Therefore, our study focuses on the relationship between ER stress and ER-phagy caused by emerging nanoparticles CdTe-QDs and its molecular mechanism. The results showed that the accumulation of ROS and ER stress induced by CdTe-QDs contributed to the activation of autophagy and ER-phagy. Importantly, our study unraveled that CdTe-QDs activate autophagy by up-regulating the transcription of core autophagy machinery. It was found that the induced ER-phagy was mediated by Atg11/Atg40/Lst1-Sec23 instead of the autophagy machinery genes. We speculated that the ER-phagy caused by CdTe-QDs may include micro-ER-phagy and macro-ER-phagy. Collectively, this work provided valuable information for the application of CdTe-QDs in the field of biology and a theoretical basis for further understanding of ER-phagy.