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The development of the two main types of diabetes mellitus, type 1 and type 2 (T1D, T2D), is closely associated with the formation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen species (RNS) in insulin-secreting pancreatic β-cells. In T1D, β-cell death
is triggered by proinflammatory cytokines, which mainly lead to the formation of ROS
in mitochondria and RNS in the cytosol. Pancreatic β-cells are extraordinarily sensitive
to oxidative stress due to their low glutathione peroxidase and catalase expression.
Thus, hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) cannot be detoxified, neither sufficiently, nor rapidly.
H2O2 itself is a rather weakly reactive ROS but can react in the Fenton reaction to form
highly reactive hydroxyl radicals (●OH), that can damage cells in a variety of ways and
induce cell death. The cell and its organelles are bounded by biological membranes
that differ in their permeability to H2O2. Aquaporins (AQPs) are water-transporting
transmembrane proteins, and some isoforms have been shown to facilitate a bidirectional transport of H2O2 across cellular membranes in addition to water. The role of
AQP8 was investigated in an insulin-producing cell model by stably overexpressing
AQP8 (AQP8↑) and by a CRISPR/Cas9-mediated AQP8 knockout. However, AQP8
proved to be an essential protein for the viability of the insulin-producing RINm5F cells, and so we established a tet-on-regulated AQP8 knockdown (AQP8 KD). Our results highlight that AQP8 is involved in H2O2 transport across the plasma and mitochondrial membranes, and that AQP8 expression gets upregulated by proinflammatory cytokines (in vitro) and in an acutely diabetic rat model (in vivo). Furthermore, it was shown that the increased proinflammatory cytokine toxicity is due to enhanced mitochondrial oxidative stress, because H2O2 cannot be efficiently transported in AQP8 KD cells and ●OH
are increasingly generated. Caspase activity then raises, and apoptosis is increasingly
induced coupled with a proportion of ferroptosis-mediated cell death because of a concomitant decrease in nitric oxide (NO●) concentration. In conclusion, AQP8 is localized in the plasma and mitochondrial membrane of insulin-producing RINm5F cells, where it is involved in H2O2 transport. In T1D, AQP8 plays an important role in the transport of H2O2 from the mitochondrial matrix to the cytosol so that the concentration is lowered in the mitochondria. This wider distribution of H2O2 may ease the inactivation of H2O2.