Integrin-linked kinase, a novel component of the cardiac mechanical stretch sensor, controls contractility in the zebrafish heart.

ABSTRACT: The vertebrate heart possesses autoregulatory mechanisms enabling it first to sense and then to adapt its force of contraction to continually changing demands. The molecular components of the cardiac mechanical stretch sensor are mostly unknown but of immense medical importance, since dysfunction of this sensing machinery is suspected to be responsible for a significant proportion of human heart failure. In the hearts of the ethylnitros-urea (ENU)-induced, recessive embryonic lethal zebrafish heart failure mutant main squeeze (msq), we find stretch-responsive genes such as atrial natriuretic factor (anf) and vascular endothelial growth factor (vegf) severely down-regulated. We demonstrate through positional cloning that heart failure in msq mutants is due to a mutation in the integrin-link

SUBMITTER: Bendig G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1560411 | biostudies-literature | 2006 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature