Project description:BACKGROUND: Alternative splicing plays crucial roles in normal heart development and cardiac disease by influencing protein-coding sequences, functional domains, and molecular networks. However, a detailed characterization of the human heart isoform landscape remains incomplete. METHODS: Leveraging long-read single-nucleus RNA sequencing and computational analysis, we dissected full-length isoform heterogeneities, expression patterns, and usage shifts across cell types, cell states, and cardiac conditions of the adult left ventricle. We applied in silico approaches to assess the functional relevance of identified isoforms; validated isoform compositions of representative cardiac genes using reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction and targeted amplicon sequencing; and developed a web server for interactive navigation of our results. RESULTS: The data revealed that isoform heterogeneity is widespread in the cardiac cellular system, serving as a posttranscriptional buffer system that calibrates the molecule reservoirs in human hearts. In healthy left ventricles, ≈30% of cell type–specific genes were polyform, using multiple isoforms tailored to cell type–specific programs. Among ubiquitously expressed genes, >300 showed differential isoform usage with cell type specificity. Compared with heart failure, 379 genes in cardiomyocytes demonstrated marked isoform usage shifts, most of which are predicted to change protein coding outcomes through direct changes in protein coding sequences and switches between intron retention and non–protein-coding biotypes. In contrast, cell state–specific programs tend to operate on monoform genes associated with changes among cell states. In addition, our data revealed heart failure–associated differential isoform usage events in stromal and immune cell types in the cardiac microenvironment. CONCLUSIONS: We present a comprehensive atlas of splicing isoforms in the normal adult heart and heart failure through long-read single-nucleus RNA sequencing and comprehensive computational analyses. The results suggest crucial roles of isoforms in buffering core cellular programs and contributing to disease-associated cell states. The full-length details of these cell-specific isoforms serve as an important reference for downstream translational and mechanistic studies and are available on our online data portal at https://github.com/gaolabtools/heart-isoform-atlas. Github repo: https://github.com/gaolabtools/heart-isoform-atlas doi: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.125.074959

Project description:The heart employs a specialized ribosome in its muscle cells to translate genetic information into proteins, a fundamental adaptation with an elusive physiological role. Its significance is underscored by the discovery of neonatal patients suffering from often fatal heart failure caused by rare biallelic variants in RPL3L, a muscle-specific ribosomal protein that replaces the ubiquitous RPL3 in cardiac ribosomes. RPL3L-linked heart failure represents the only known human disease arising from mutations in tissue-specific ribosomes, yet the underlying pathogenetic mechanisms remain poorly understood despite an increasing number of reported cases. While the autosomal recessive inheritance pattern suggests a loss-of-function mechanism, Rpl3l-knockout mice display only mild phenotypes, attributed to up-regulation of the ubiquitous Rpl3. Interestingly, living human knockouts of RPL3L have been identified. Here, we report two new cases of RPL3L-linked severe neonatal heart failure and uncover an unusual pathogenetic mechanism through integrated analyses of population genetic data, patient cardiac tissue, and isogenic cells expressing RPL3L variants. Our findings demonstrate that patient hearts lack sufficient RPL3 compensation. Moreover, contrary to a simple loss-of-function mechanism often associated with autosomal recessive diseases, RPL3L-linked disease is driven by a combination of gain-of-toxicity and loss-of-function. Most patients harbor a recurrent toxic missense variant alongside a non-recurrent variant. The non-recurrent variant is often loss-of-function and enables partial compensation through RPL3, similar to Rpl3l-knockout mice. However, the recurrent missense variant exhibits increased affinity for the RPL3/RPL3L chaperone GRWD1 and 60S biogenesis factors, retains 28S rRNA in the nucleus, disrupts ribosome biogenesis, and induces severe cellular toxicity that extends beyond the loss of ribosomes. These findings elucidate the pathogenetic mechanisms underlying muscle-specific ribosome dysfunction in neonatal heart failure, providing critical insights for genetic screening and therapeutic development. Our findings also suggest that gain-of-toxicity mechanisms may be more widespread in autosomal recessive diseases, especially for those involving genes with paralogs.

Project description:The unfolded protein response (UPR) maintains endoplasmic reticulum (ER) proteostasis through the activation of transcription factors such as XBP1s and ATF6. The functional consequences of these transcription factors for ER proteostasis remain poorly defined. Here, we describe methodology that enables orthogonal, small molecule-mediated activation of the UPR-associated transcription factors XBP1s and/or ATF6 in the same cell independent of stress. We employ transcriptomics and quantitative proteomics to evaluate ER proteostasis network remodeling owing to the XBP1s and/or ATF6 transcriptional programs. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the three ER proteostasis environments accessible by activating XBP1s and/or ATF6 differentially influence the folding, trafficking, and degradation of destabilized ER client proteins without globally affecting the endogenous proteome. Our data reveal how the ER proteostasis network is remodeled by the XBP1s and/or ATF6 transcriptional programs at the molecular level and demonstrate the potential for selectively restoring aberrant ER proteostasis of pathologic, destabilized proteins through arm-selective UPR-activation. The unfolded protein response adapts endoplasmic reticulum (ER) proteostasis via stress-responsive transcription factors including XBP1s and ATF6. Here, R. Luke Wiseman and colleagues implement technology for the orthogonal, ligand-dependent activation of XBP1s and/or ATF6 in a single cell. They characterize how XBP1s and/or ATF6 activation impacts ER proteostasis pathway composition and function. Adapted ER environments influence the proteostasis of destabilized protein variants without affecting the endogenous proteome. The work informs the development of proteostasis environment-adapting therapeutics for protein misfolding-related diseases. In order to activate both XBP1s and ATF6 in the same cell, we incorporated DHFR.ATF6 and tet-inducible XBP1s into a HEK293T-REx cell line stably expressing the tet-repressor. The HEK293DYG control cell line expresses tet-inducible eGFP and DHFR.YFP and is used as a control to demonstrate that the addition of doxycycline (dox) and trimethoprim (TMP) do not induce UPR genes. HEK293DYG cells were treated for 12 h with vehicle or 1 μg/mL dox and 10 μM TMP in biological triplicate. Cells were harvested and RNA was extracted using the RNeasy Mini Kit (Qiagen). Genomic DNA was removed by on-column digestion using the RNase-free DNase Set (Qiagen). Data from HEK293DYG cells showed no significant overlap in the ligand-treated transcriptomes obtained from HEK293DAX cells.

			Action	DRS
	72498txt.rar	Other
	73501txt.rar	Other
	87976.rar	Other
	Seq72498_QE3.raw	Raw
	Seq72499_QE3.raw	Raw

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Sub-cellular in vivo cardiac proteomics of sarcomere and ribosome interactomes identifies skeletal NACA's role in mitochondrial protein sorting.

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