Key result
Dual loss of obscurin and Obsl1 drives severe diastolic dysfunction and premature death in mice.
Why the study?
The precise molecular functions, redundancies, and involvement in cardiac diseases of obscurin family members remain incompletely understood.
Combined loss of obscurin and Obsl1 in murine hearts leads to diastolic dysfunction, altered metabolism, and deregulated mitophagy, highlighting their crucial roles in cardiac function.
Animal data on obscurin/Obsl1 loss do not alter clinical HF management; extends sarcomeric protein research but leaves human translation open.
Muscle proteins of the obscurin protein family play important roles in sarcomere organization, sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) and T-tubule architecture and function. However, their precise molecular functions and redundancies between protein family members as well as their involvement in cardiac diseases remain to be fully understood. To investigate the functional roles of obscurin and its close homologue obscurin-like 1 (Obsl1) in the heart, we generated and analyzed knockout mice for obscurin, Obsl1, as well as obscurin/Obsl1 double-knockouts (dKO). We show that dKO mice are viable but show postnatal deficits in cardiac muscle SR and mitochondrial architecture and function at the microscopic, biochemical and cellular level. Altered SR structure resulted in perturbed calcium cycling, while mitochondrial ultrastructure deficits were linked to decreased levels of Chchd3, a Micos complex protein. Hearts of dKO mice also show increased expression of Atg4d, a novel Obsl1 interacting protein, resulting in abnormal mitophagy and increased unfolded protein response. At the physiological level, loss of obscurin and Obsl1 resulted in a profound delay of cardiac relaxation, associated with metabolic signs of heart failure. Taken together, our data suggest that obscurin and Obsl1 play crucial roles in cardiac SR structure, calcium cycling, mitochondrial function, turnover and metabolism.
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Fujita et al. (2022) studied Diastolic dysfunction. Combined loss of obscurin and obscurin-like 1 (dKO) vs. Wildtype control mice was evaluated on Cardiac function (diastolic relaxation), SR structure, and mitochondrial function. Combined cardiac-specific loss of obscurin and Obsl1 in mice resulted in severe diastolic dysfunction, altered metabolism, and deregulated mitophagy, leading to premature death.
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