Academic lecture

Reporter: Yi-Ping Li

Topic: Endogenous Osteoclast Negative Signaling Attenuates Bone Loss in Osteoporosis and Rheumatoid Arthritis

Time: 09:00 on April 28^th,2017

Place: Room 102,School of Life Sciences

Content: Many positive signalling pathways of osteoclastogenesis have been characterized, but negative signalling pathways are less well studied. Here we show by microarray and RNAi that guanine nucleotide-binding protein subunit α13 (Gα13) is a negative regulator of osteoclastogenesis. Osteoclast-lineage-specific Gna13 conditional knockout mice have a severe osteoporosis phenotype. Gna13-deficiency triggers a drastic increase in both osteoclast number and activity (hyper-activation), mechanistically through decreased RhoA activity and enhanced Akt/GSK3β/NFATc1 signalling. Consistently, Akt inhibition or RhoA activation rescues hyper-activation of Gna13-deficient osteoclasts, and RhoA inhibition mimics the osteoclast hyperactivation resulting from Gna13-deficiency. Notably, Gα13 gain-of-function inhibits Act activation and osteoclastogenesis, and protects mice from pathological bone loss in disease models. Collectively, we reveal that Gα13 is a master endogenous negative switch for osteoclastogenesis through regulation of the RhoA/Act/GSK3β/NFATc1 signalling pathway, and that manipulating Gα13 activity might be a therapeutic strategy for bone diseases, such as osteoporosis and rheumatoid arthritis.