Project description:Mutations in Nkx2-5 are a main cause of cardiac congenital heart disease. Here we describe a new Nkx2-5 point-mutation murine model, akin to its human counterpart disease generating mutation. Our model fully reproduces the morphological and physiological clinical presentations of the disease and reveals an under-studied aspect of Nkx2-5 driven pathology, a primary right ventricular dysfunction. We further describe the molecular consequences of disrupting the transcriptional network regulated by Nkx2-5 in the heart and show that Nkx2-5 dependent perturbation of the Wnt signaling pathway promotes heart dysfunction through alteration of cardiomyocyte metabolism. Our data provide mechanistic insights on how Nkx2-5 regulates heart function and metabolism, a novel link in the study of congenital heart disease, and confirms that our models are the first murine genetic models to present all spectra of clinically relevant congenital heart disease phenotypes generated by Nkx2-5 mutations in patients.
Project description:We report the transcriptomic differences between engineered heart tissues generated from hiPSCs with a dystrophin-truncating mutation and an isogenic control. We find that the dystrophin mutation induces profound differences at the transcriptomic level and illuminates potential disease-causing mechanisms.
Project description:In summary, we discovered (1) that glucose dose-dependently inhibits cardiac maturation in vitro and in vivo, (2) that the maturation-inhibitory effect is dependent on nucleotide biosynthesis via the PPP, (3) that the developing heart accomplishes glucose deprivation condition by limiting the glucose uptake at late gestational stages during normal embryogenesis, and (4) that perturbation of the glucose deprivation in gestational diabetes affects natural cardiomyocyte maturation and potentially contributes to congenital heart disease.
