Sortilin turnover is mediated by ubiquitination

Sortilin is a transmembrane domain protein that has been implicated in the sorting of prosaposin and other soluble cargo from the Golgi to the lysosomal compartment. While the majority of the receptor is recycled back to the Golgi from endosomes, it is known that upon successive rounds of transport, a proportion of sortilin is degraded in lysosomes. Recently, it was shown that sortilin is palmitoylated and that this post-translational modification prevents its degradation and enables sortilin to efficiently traffic back to the Golgi. Thus palmitoylation can be used to modulate the amount of receptor and hence cargo reaching the lysosome. In this work, we demonstrate that non-palmitoylated sortilin is ubiquitinated and internalized into the lysosomal compartment via the ESCRT pathway for degradation. Furthermore, we identified Nedd4 as an E3 ubiquitin ligase that mediates this post-translational modification. We propose a model where palmitoylation and ubiquitination play opposite roles in the stability and turnover of sortilin and serve as a control mechanism that balances the amount of lysosomal sorting and trafficking in cells.

► Non-palmitoylated sortilin is ubiquitinated.
► Ubiquitinated sortilin is degraded in lysosomes via the ESCRT machinery.
► The E3 ligase Nedd4 is implicated in the degradation of sortilin.