The Role of Mitophagy in Muscle Stem Cell Fate and Function During Muscle Regeneration

Abstract

Skeletal muscles have a remarkable capacity to repair and regenerate in response to injury by virtue of their unique population of resident muscle stem cells (MuSCs). Recently, several studies have reported that mitochondria are important regulators of fate and function in various types of stem cells including MuSCs. Furthermore, emerging evidence has shown that accumulation of dysfunctional mitochondria leads to stem cell aging, premature commitment and impaired self-renewal. Preliminary evidence from publicly available transcriptomics datasets processed by our lab showed that Phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN)-induced putative kinase 1(PINK1) and Parkin/PARK2 genes, two key regulators of mitophagy are expressed in quiescent MuSCs and are transiently down-regulated as MuSCs activate. This led us to hypothesize that maintenance of an optimally functioning population of mitochondria through mitophagy would be important for self-renewal and muscle repair. In vitro single myofiber cultures isolated from mitophagy reporter mice (mito-QC mice), show that mitophagy is active in quiescent MuSCs and is transiently decreased upon MuSCs activation. We also show that mitophagy is re-activated in differentiating and self-renewing MuSCs. To further study muscle regeneration, we used a cardiotoxin (CTX) injury model of the Tibialis anterior (TA) muscle in mouse models harboring a knockout (KO) of PINK1 and Parkin. We show that loss of PINK1 in vivo promotes commitment of MuSCs in response to acute injury and ultimately leads to depletion of the MuSC pool and impaired muscle regeneration compared to wild type (WT) mice following repetitive injuries. Similarly, loss of Parkin in MuSCs in vivo impaired their self-renewal capacity. Consistent with these results, in vitro single myofiber cultures isolated from PINK1-deficient mice showed increased MuSCs commitment and impaired self-renewal. In vitro preliminary results from MuSCs-specific KO of Parkin revealed altered lineage progression, differentiation and self-renewal of MuSCs. Together, these findings suggest that PINK1/Parkin-dependent mitophagy acts as an important mitochondrial quality control mechanism which could be required for regulating MuSCs fate and function during muscle regeneration.