Acinetobacter baumannii up-regulates LncRNA-GAS5 and promotes the degradation of STX17 by blocking the activation of YY1

Acinetobacter baumanniitriggers autophagy, affects the degradation of autophagy, and causes severe inflammatory injury. LncRNA growth arrest-specific transcript 5 (LncRNA-GAS5) and Yin and Yang 1 (YY1) are known to play an important role in the regulation of autophagy, however, the precise role of LncRNA-GAS5 and YY1 in the damage to autophagy caused by Acinetobacter baumanniiremains unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of LncRNA-GAS5 and YY1 in the regulation of autophagy induced by Acinetobacter baumannii. We found that LncRNA-GAS5 was up-regulated following infection with Acinetobacter baumannii, thus resulting in the degradation of STX17, autophagy disorders, and the aggravated replication of Acinetobacter baumannii. We also analyzed the mechanism of interaction between LncRNA-GAS5 and YY1 and found that YY1 regulated its expression in a negative manner by binding to the promoter of LncRNA-GAS5. LncRNA-GAS5 and YY1 had opposite effects on the expression of STX17, this process maintained the stable expression of STX17. Following Acinetobacter baumannii infection, YY1 was down regulated and then separated from the binding region of LncRNA-GAS5, thus resulting in the activation of LncRNA-GAS5 transcription and reduction in STX17 protein expression. Finally, we infected LncRNA-GAS5 knockdown mice with Acinetobacter baumannii, the expression levels of IFN-β in the lungs increased significantly, this alleviated lung injury. In conclusion, our work demonstrated the mechanism by which Acinetobacter baumannii infection can cause the degradation of STX17. We also demonstrated that LncRNA-GAS5 may be a potential therapeutic target for the treatment of lung injury induced by Acinetobacter baumannii.