Abstract
Macroautophagy (hereafter autophagy) is a process that degrades cellular components to maintain homeostasis. The Ca2+ sensor calmodulin (CaM) regulates numerous cell functions but is a limiting factor due to its insufficient availability for all target proteins. However, evidence that CaM availability regulates basal autophagy is lacking. Here, we have tested this hypothesis. CaM antagonists W-7, trifluoperazine and CGS9343b cause autophagosome accumulation and inhibit basal autophagic flux in the same manner as does chloroquine. These reagents promote the activity of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) but not that of the mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR). Competitive binding assays using CaM sensors with different Ca2+ dependencies showed that chloroquine directly binds CaM in a Ca2+ -dependent fashion. The CaM antagonists have disparate effects on cytoplasmic Ca2+ , triggering from none to robust signals, indicating that their consistent inhibition of autophagy is due to inhibition of CaM and not Ca2+ . Chelating intracellular Ca2+ reduces the effect of the CaM antagonists to accumulate LC3-II, indicating that they do so by inhibiting CaM-dependent activities at basal Ca2+ level. The CaM antagonists cause lysosomal alkalinisation. Consistently, buffering CaM with a high-affinity CaM-binding protein that binds CaM at resting Ca2+ level increases lysosomal pH. Enhanced CaM buffering using a chimeric protein that contains two high-affinity CaM-binding sites that can collectively bind CaM at a large range of Ca2+ further increases lysosomal pH and increases LC3-II accumulation and AMPK activity, but not that of mTOR. These data demonstrate that CaM availability is required for basal autophagy.