p53 regulates autophagic activity in senescent rat mesenchymal stromal cells

• In replicative senescent BMSCs, we observed autophagy marker and up-regulated autophagy related genes.
• p53 not only plays a crucial role in senescence but also essentially triggers autophagy during culture expansion of BMSCs.
• mTOR is a downstream regulator of p53 during replicative chronic senescence of BMSCs.

The tumor suppressor protein p53 is an important player in the regulation of cell senescence, its functions are largely carried out by modulating its downstream genes. Emerging evidence has suggested that senescence and autophagy appear to be regulated by overlapping signaling pathways. Furthermore, autophagy markers have been observed in senescent cells. In this study, we sought to explore the effects of the expression pattern and function of p53 on the activity of autophagy and replicative senescence in bone marrow derived mesenchymal stromal cells (BMSCs). We found that more than 85% of BMSCs stained positive for SA-β-gal at passage 6 (senescent BMSCs) with increased expressions of senescence related genes (p16ink4a and p21waf1). These results were accompanied by the up-regulation of p53, down-regulation of mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) and phosphorylation of Rb. Senescent BMSCs displayed an increased monodansylcadaverine (MDC) staining and autophagy related genes (LC3 and atg12) level compared with BMSCs at passage 2. Knockdown of p53 alleviated the senescent state and reduced autophagic activity during the progression of BMSC senescence, which was accompanied by significantly up-regulated levels of mTOR and phosphorylation of Rb. These results demonstrate that autophagy increases when BMSCs enter the replicative senescence state, and p53 contributes a crucial role in the up-regulation of autophagy in this state.