Intracellular trehalose improves osmotolerance but not desiccation tolerance in mammalian cells

Trehalose has been shown to play a role in osmotolerance or desiccation tol erance in some microorganisms, anhydrobiotic invertebrates and resurrection plants. To test whether trehalose could improve stress responses of higher eukaryotes, a mouse cell line was genetically engineered to express bacter ial trehalose synthase genes. We report that the resulting levels of intrac ellular trehalose (similar to 80 mM) are able to confer increased resistanc e to the partial dehydration resulting from hypertonic stress, but do not e nable survival of complete desiccation due to air drying. (C) 2000 Federati on of European Biochemical Societies. Published by Elsevier Science B.V, Al l rights reserved.