Analysis of cardiac gene expression in juvenile versus mature mice with repressed CELF activity (MHC-CELFdelta)

ABSTRACT: CUG-BP, Elav-like family (CELF) proteins regulate alternative splicing. In MHC-CELFdelta transgenic mice, CELF-mediated alternative splicing is disrupted in heart muscle via expression of a nuclear dominant negative CELF protein under an alpha-myosin heavy chain promoter. MHC-CELFdelta mice develop dilated cardiomyopathy and contractile dysfunction by 3 weeks of age, shortly after the transgene is activated and splicing defects appear. Cardiac function and heart size spontaneously recover with age in a low-expressing (mild) line of MHC-CELFdelta mice despite persistence of dominant negative protein expression and splicing defects, whereas there is no recovery in a higher-expressing (severe) line that also experiences early muscle death and fibrosis. In this study, we explored the basis for this functional recovery by comparing the gene expression profiles in the hearts of low- and high-expressing lines of MHC-CELFdelta mice to those of wild type littermates at 3 weeks (when cardiac dysfunction is maximal) and 24 weeks (when the low-expressing line has recovered) using microarrays. We found that differences in gene expression are greatly reduced in older animals from the low-expressing line, but were exacerbated in the high-expressing line. We did not find evidence of a new compensatory pathway being activated in the low-expressing line with age, and propose that recovery may occur due to developmental stage-specific compatibility of CELF-dependent splice variants with the changing cellular environment of cardiomyocytes. Microarray analysis was performed on total RNA extracted from whole hearts of female mice: three MHC-CELFdelta-10 (high-expressing line) and three MHC-CELFdelta-574 (low-expressing line) were collected at 3 weeks, and five MHC-CELFdelta-10 and five MHC-CELFdelta-574 were collected at 24 weeks. Two wild type mice from each line were collected at each time point (n = 4 total wild type at 3 weeks, and n = 4 total wild type at 24 weeks).

ORGANISM(S): Mus musculus

SUBMITTER: John Barnard 

PROVIDER: E-GEOD-62363 | biostudies-arrayexpress |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-arrayexpress