FGT-1-mediated glucose uptake is defective in insulin/IGF-like signaling mutants in Caenorhabditis elegans.

Insulin signaling plays a central role in the regulation of facilitative glucose transporters (GLUTs) in humans. To establish Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) as a model to study the mechanism underlying insulin regulation of GLUT, we identified that FGT-1 is most likely the only functional GLUT homolog in C. elegans and is ubiquitously expressed. The FGT-1-mediated glucose uptake was almost completely defective in insulin/IGF-like signaling (IIS) mutants daf-2 and age-1, and this defect mainly resulted from the down-regulated FGT-1 protein expression. However, glycosylation may also be involved because OGA-1, an O-GlcNAcase, was essential for the function of FGT-1. Thus, our study showed that C. elegans can be a new powerful model system to study insulin regulation of GLUT.