Autophagy mediates p53 degradation and is essential for human myelopoiesis

Emergency myelopoiesis (EM) is critical for immune defense against pathogens, which requires rapid replenishing of mature myeloid cells. The EM process involves a rapid cell cycle switch from the quiescent hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) to highly proliferative myeloid progenitors (MPs). How this cell cycle switch is regulated remains poorly understood. Here, we reveal that ATG7, a critical autophagy factor is essential for the rapid proliferation of MPs during human myelopoiesis. Peripheral blood (PB) mobilized HSPCs with ATG7 knock-down or HSPCs derived from ATG7-/- human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) exhibit severe defect in proliferation at MP stage during myeloid/granulocytes differentiation. ATG7 deficient MPs show substantially elevated P53 protein and up-regulation of P53 signaling pathway genes. Mechanistically, ATG7 dependent autophagy mediates P53 degradation in lysosome that allows normal proliferation of MPs. Together, we reveal an essential role of autophagy for P53 degradation in cell cycle switch during human myelopoiesis Overall design: We compared the transcriptome of the WT and ATG7 knocked down peripheral blood derived myeloid progenitors by RNA-Seq