bioRxiv. 2025 Nov 26. pii: 2025.11.24.690233. [Epub ahead of print]
Cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) signaling is a major stimulus for lipid and glucose catabolism, yet catabolic processes like these can also coordinate with lysosome-dependent degradation. However, the impact of cAMP signaling on lysosomal dynamics remains unclear. Transcription factor EB (TFEB), a master regulator of lysosomal biogenesis, is regulated by stimulus-dependent nuclear-cytoplasmic shuttling through a variety of phosphorylation events. Here, we find that elevating intracellular cAMP with forskolin and IBMX induces rapid nuclear import of TFEB-GFP within 30 minutes and coincides with a transient upregulation of TFEB target lysosome genes. By 8 hours, TFEB returns to the cytoplasm, accompanied by transcriptional downregulation. Inhibition of cAMP-dependent protein kinase A (PKA) using H89 did not block nuclear import but unexpectedly caused sustained nuclear accumulation, indicating that PKA promotes TFEB nuclear export. Consistent with this, phosphoproteomic profiling revealed increased phosphorylation of a PKA-consensus motif (RRx S) during the export phase. These findings suggest that cAMP-PKA signaling plays a novel role in temporally "tuning" lysosomal gene expression by regulating TFEB nuclear-cytoplasmic shuttling.
Summary: This study reveals that cAMP signaling dynamically regulates TFEB subcellular localization, promoting transient, calcium-dependent nuclear import as well as downstream, PKA-dependent export and phosphorylation at serines 466/467. These findings uncover a novel mechanism by which cAMP stimulation fine-tunes lysosomal gene expression by regulating TFEB nuclear import and export.