Nonsense mediated decay factor UPF3B is associated with cMyBP-C haploinsufficiency in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy patients.

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is the most prevalent inherited cardiac disease. Up to 40% of cases are associated with heterozygous mutations in myosin binding protein C (cMyBP-C, MYBPC3). Most of these mutations lead to premature termination codons (PTC) and patients show reduction of functional cMyBP-C. This so-called haploinsufficiency most likely contributes to disease development. We analyzed mechanisms underlying haploinsufficiency using cardiac tissue from HCM-patients with truncation mutations in MYBPC3 (MYBPC3trunc). We compared transcriptional activity, mRNA and protein expression to donor controls. To differentiate between HCM-specific and general hypertrophy-induced mechanisms we used patients with left ventricular hypertrophy due to aortic stenosis (AS) as an additional control. We show that cMyBP-C haploinsufficiency starts at the mRNA level, despite hypertrophy-induced increased transcriptional activity. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) of RNA-sequencing data revealed an increased expression of NMD-components. Among them, Up-frameshift protein UPF3B, a regulator of NMD was upregulated in MYBPC3trunc patients and not in AS-patients. Strikingly, we show that in sarcomeres UPF3B but not UPF1 and UPF2 are localized to the Z-discs, the presumed location of sarcomeric protein translation. Our data suggest that cMyBP-C haploinsufficiency in HCM-patients is established by UPF3B-dependent NMD during the initial translation round at the Z-disc.

Transcriptional bursts and heterogeneity among cardiomyocytes in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

Transcriptional bursting is a common expression mode for most genes where independent transcription of alleles leads to different ratios of allelic mRNA from cell to cell. Here we investigated burst-like transcription and its consequences in cardiac tissue from Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM) patients with heterozygous mutations in the sarcomeric proteins cardiac myosin binding protein C (cMyBP-C, MYBPC3) and cardiac troponin I (cTnI, TNNI3). Using fluorescence in situ hybridization (RNA-FISH) we found that both, MYBPC3 and TNNI3 are transcribed burst-like. Along with that, we show unequal allelic ratios of TNNI3-mRNA among single cardiomyocytes and unequally distributed wildtype cMyBP-C protein across tissue sections from heterozygous HCM-patients. The mutations led to opposing functional alterations, namely increasing (cMyBP-Cc.927-2A>G) or decreasing (cTnIR145W) calcium sensitivity. Regardless, all patients revealed highly variable calcium-dependent force generation between individual cardiomyocytes, indicating contractile imbalance, which appears widespread in HCM-patients. Altogether, we provide strong evidence that burst-like transcription of sarcomeric genes can lead to an allelic mosaic among neighboring cardiomyocytes at mRNA and protein level. In HCM-patients, this presumably induces the observed contractile imbalance among individual cardiomyocytes and promotes HCM-development.

The molybdenum cofactor biosynthesis complex interacts with actin filaments via molybdenum insertase Cnx1 as anchor protein in Arabidopsis thaliana.

The pterin based molybdenum cofactor (Moco) plays an essential role in almost all organisms. Its biosynthesis is catalysed by six enzymes in a conserved four step reaction pathway. The last three steps are located in the cytoplasm, where a multimeric protein complex is formed to protect the intermediates from degradation. Bimolecular fluorescence complementation was used to test for cytoskeleton association of the Moco biosynthesis enzymes with actin filaments and microtubules using known cytoskeleton associated proteins, thus permitting non-invasive in vivo studies. Coding sequences of binding proteins were cloned via the GATEWAY system. No Moco biosynthesis enzyme showed any interaction with microtubules. However, alone the two domain protein Cnx1 exhibited interaction with actin filaments mediated by both domains with the Cnx1G domain displaying a stronger interaction. Cnx6 showed actin association only if unlabelled Cnx1 was co-expressed in comparable amounts. So Cnx1 is likely to be the anchor protein for the whole biosynthesis complex on actin filaments. A stabilization of the whole Moco biosynthesis complex on the cytoskeleton might be crucial. In addition a micro-compartmentation might either allow a localisation near the mitochondrial ATM3 exporter providing the first Moco intermediate or near one of the three molybdate transporters enabling efficient molybdate incorporation.