Key result
Cardiac Pdzrn3 deficiency protected against heart failure, whereas its overexpression impaired postnatal cardiomyocyte maturation and led to premature death in mice.
Why the study?
Alterations in contact sites between cardiomyocytes are a hallmark of heart failure, but no factor on its own is known to coordinate cardiomyocyte polarized organization.
Pdzrn3 repression is essential for postnatal cardiomyocyte maturation, and its deficiency protects against heart failure in preclinical models, highlighting it as a potential therapeutic target.
Heart failure is the final common stage of most cardiopathies. Cardiomyocytes connect with others via their extremities by intercalated disk protein complexes. This planar and directional organization of myocytes is crucial for mechanical coupling and anisotropic conduction of the electric signal in the heart. One of the hallmarks of heart failure is alterations in the contact sites between cardiomyocytes. Yet no factor on its own is known to coordinate cardiomyocyte polarized organization. We report enhanced levels of an ubiquitine ligase Pdzrn3 in diseased hypertrophic human and mouse myocardium, which correlates with a loss of cardiomyocyte polarized elongation. We provide evidence that Pdzrn3 has a causative role in heart failure. We found that cardiac Pdzrn3 deficiency protected against heart failure while over expression of Pdzrn3 in mouse cardiomyocytes during the first weeks of life, impaired postnatal cardiomyocyte maturation leading to premature death. Our results reveal a novel signaling pathway that controls a genetic program essential for heart maturation and maintenance of overall geometry, as well as the contractile function of cardiomyocytes, and implicates PDZRN3 as a potential therapeutic target for the prevention of human heart failure.
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Pernot et al. (2020) studied Heart failure. Pdzrn3 deficiency or overexpression vs. Normal Pdzrn3 levels was evaluated on Heart failure and postnatal cardiomyocyte maturation. Cardiac Pdzrn3 deficiency protected against heart failure, whereas its overexpression impaired postnatal cardiomyocyte maturation and led to premature death in mice.
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