Visualization of cardiac thick filament dynamics in ex vivo heart preparations.

ABSTRACT:

Rationale

Cardiac muscle cells are terminally differentiated after birth and must beat continually throughout one's lifetime. This mechanical process is driven by the sliding of actin-based thin filaments along myosin-based thick filaments, organized within sarcomeres. Despite costly energetic demand, the half-life of the proteins that comprise the cardiac thick filaments is ∼10 days, with individual molecules being replaced stochastically, by unknown mechanisms.

Objectives

To allow for the stochastic replacement of molecules, we hypothesized that the structure of thick filaments must be highly dynamic in vivo.

Methods and results

To test this hypothesis in adult mouse hearts, we replaced a fraction of the endogenous myosin regulatory light chain (RLC), a component of

SUBMITTER: Kelly CM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10959293 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature