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Short-term Akt activation in cardiac muscle cells improves contractile dysfunction in failing hearts.

ABSTRACT: Akt is a serine/threonine protein kinase that is activated by a variety of growth factors or cytokines in a PI3-kinase dependent manner. Using a conditional transgenic system in which Akt signaling can be turned on or off in the adult heart, we have recently demonstrated that short-term Akt activation induces a ‘physiological’ form of cardiac hypertrophy with enhanced coronary angiogenesis and maintained contractility. Here we tested the hypothesis that induction of physiological hypertrophy by short-term Akt activation might improve contractile function in failing hearts. When Akt signaling was transiently activated in murine hearts with impaired contractility induced by pressure overload or adriamycin treatment, contractile dysfunction was attenuated in both cases. Importantly, improvement of contractility was observed before the development of cardiac hypertrophy, indicating that Akt improves contractile dysfunction independently of its growth-promoting effects. To gain mechanistic insights into Akt-mediated positive inotropic effects, transcriptional profiles in the heart were determined in a pressure overload-induced heart failure model. Biological network analysis of differentially expressed transcripts revealed significant alterations in the expression of genes associated with cell death, and these alterations were reversed by short-term Akt activation. Thus, short-term Akt activation improves contractile dysfunction in failing hearts. This beneficial effect of Akt on contractility is hypertrophy-independent and may be mediated in part by inhibition of cell death associated with heart failure. Keywords: transgenic mice, Akt1, cardiac hypertrophy after ascending aortic constriction and contractile dysfunction, DNA microarrays

ORGANISM(S): Mus musculus

PROVIDER: GSE4728 | GEO | 2019/07/01

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:To investigate molecular mechanisms involved in the development of cardiac hypertrophy and heart failure, a tetracycline-regulated transgenic system to conditionally switch a constitutively-active form of the Akt1 protein kinase on or off in the adult heart was developed. Short-term activation (2 weeks) of Akt1 resulted in completely reversible hypertrophy with maintained contractility. In contrast, chronic Akt1 activation (6 weeks) induced extensive cardiac hypertrophy, severe contractile dysfunction, and massive interstitial fibrosis. The focus of this study was to create a transcript expression profile of the heart as it undergoes reversible Akt1-mediated hypertrophy and during the transition from compensated hypertrophy to heart failure. Heart tissue was analyzed before transgene induction, 2 weeks after transgene induction, 2 weeks of transgene induction followed by 2 days of repression, 6 weeks after transgene induction and 6 weeks of transgene induction followed by 2 weeks of repression. Acute over expression of Akt1 (2 weeks) leads to changes in the expression of 826 transcripts relative to non-induced hearts, whereas chronic induction (6 weeks) led to changes in the expression of 1611, of which 65% represented transcripts that were regulated during the pathological phase of heart growth. Another set of genes identified were uniquely regulated during heart regression but not growth, indicating that non-overlapping transcription programs participate in the processes of cardiac hypertrophy and atrophy. These data define the gene regulatory programs downstream of Akt that control heart size and contribute to the transition from compensatory hypertrophy to heart failure. Experiment Overall Design: Gene expression data from DTG-positive mouse hearts were examined before the induction of the transgene Akt1 (time point 1), 2 weeks after the induction of the transgene Akt1(time point 2), 2 weeks after the induction of the transgene Akt1 and 2 days after the repression of the transgene Akt1 (time point 3), 6 weeks after the induction of the transgene Akt1(time point 4) and 6 weeks after the induction of the transgene Akt1 and 2 weeks after the repression of the transgene Akt1 (time point 5). N = 3 to 4 sets of independent hybridizations from individual mice were performed for each time point.

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Short-term Akt activation in cardiac muscle cells improves contractile dysfunction in failing hearts.

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