Aneuploidy-induced cellular stresses limit autophagic degradation.

An unbalanced karyotype, a condition known as aneuploidy, has a profound impact on cellular physiology and is a hallmark of cancer. Determining how aneuploidy affects cells is thus critical to understanding tumorigenesis. Here we show that aneuploidy interferes with the degradation of autophagosomes within lysosomes. Mis-folded proteins that accumulate in aneuploid cells due to aneuploidy-induced proteomic changes overwhelm the lysosome with cargo, leading to the observed lysosomal degradation defects. Importantly, aneuploid cells respond to lysosomal saturation. They activate a lysosomal stress pathway that specifically increases the expression of genes needed for autophagy-mediated protein degradation. Our results reveal lysosomal saturation as a universal feature of the aneuploid state that must be overcome during tumorigenesis. RPE-1 cells either untreated or treated with one of Reversine, Bafilomycin A1 or MG132, each condition was done in triplicate. D14-*_Control: untreated control D14-*_Rev: cells treated with 0.5uM Reversine for 24hrs and harvested 48hrs later D14-*_Baf: cells treated with 0.1uM BafA1 for 6hrs D14-*_Mg: cells treated with 1uM MG132 for 24 hrs