Project description:<p>The Cleveland Clinic Atrial Fibrillation Study consists of clinical and genetic data of patients with atrial fibrillation and control cohorts from the Cleveland Clinic CV/Arrhythmia Biobank, including the Cleveland Clinic Lone Atrial Fibrillation GeneBank. The Cleveland Clinic Lone AF GeneBank Study has enrolled patients with lone AF, defined as AF in the absence of significant structural heart disease. The CV/Arrhythmia Biobank has also enrolled participants with non-lone atrial fibrillation. All patients provided written informed consent.</p>
Project description:Pitx2 is the homeobox gene located in proximity to the human 4q25 familial atrial fibrillation locus. Pitx2 haploinsufficient mice are prone to pacing induced atrial fibrillation indicating that reduced Pitx2 promotes an arrhythmogenic substrate within the atrium. Here, we inactivated Pitx2 in postnatal heart and discovered that unstressed adult Pitx2 mutant mice had sinus node dysfunction with impaired atrial conduction, an arrhythmia closely associated with atrial fibrillation. A genome-wide search for Pitx2 transcriptional targets using ChIP-sequencing and RNA expression profiling shows that Pitx2 represses target genes encoding cell junction proteins, ion channels, and critical transcriptional regulators many of which have been implicated in human atrial fibrillation by genome wide association studies. Our findings unveil a Pitx2 postnatal arrhythmogenic function, novel Pitx2 target genes relevant to atrial fibrillation, and reveal that Pitx2 stabilizes the intercalated disc in postnatal atrium. Genomic occupancy profiling of transcriptional factor Pitx2 in postnatal heart.
Project description:Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common heart arrhythmia disease. The greatest risk of atrial fibrillation is stroke, and stroke caused by valvular heart disease with atrial fibrillation (AF-VHD) is more serious. the development mechanism from VHD to AF-VHD is not yet clear. The research on expression profiles of lncRNA and mRNA is helpful to explore molecular mechanism in patients with valvular heart disease who develop atrial fibrillation.
