ABSTRACT
Core facilities play a central role in the life sciences by generating data and ensuring quality standards. Their contributions to research should be appropriately acknowledged or cited in research papers.
Subject(s)
Bibliometrics , Biological Science Disciplines , PublicationsABSTRACT
Cardiac dysfunctions dramatically increase with age. Revealing a currently unknown contributor to cardiac ageing, we report the age-dependent, cardiac-specific accumulation of the lysosphingolipid sphinganine (dihydrosphingosine, DHS) as an evolutionarily conserved hallmark of the aged vertebrate heart. Mechanistically, the DHS-derivative sphinganine-1-phosphate (DHS1P) directly inhibits HDAC1, causing an aberrant elevation in histone acetylation and transcription levels, leading to DNA damage. Accordingly, the pharmacological interventions, preventing (i) the accumulation of DHS1P using SPHK2 inhibitors, (ii) the aberrant increase in histone acetylation using histone acetyltransferase (HAT) inhibitors, (iii) the DHS1P-dependent increase in transcription using an RNA polymerase II inhibitor, block DHS-induced DNA damage in human cardiomyocytes. Importantly, an increase in DHS levels in the hearts of healthy young adult mice leads to an impairment in cardiac functionality indicated by a significant reduction in left ventricular fractional shortening and ejection fraction, mimicking the functional deterioration of aged hearts. These molecular and functional defects can be partially prevented in vivo using HAT inhibitors. Together, we report an evolutionarily conserved mechanism by which increased DHS levels drive the decline in cardiac health.
Subject(s)
Aging/genetics , Aging/metabolism , Genetic Variation , Genomic Instability , Myocardium/metabolism , Sphingolipids/metabolism , Animals , Curcumin/chemistry , Curcumin/pharmacology , DNA Damage/drug effects , Energy Metabolism , Epigenesis, Genetic , Evolution, Molecular , Fundulidae , Gene Expression Profiling , Gene Expression Regulation , Genomics/methods , Histone Acetyltransferases/chemistry , Histone Acetyltransferases/metabolism , Histone Deacetylase Inhibitors/chemistry , Histone Deacetylase Inhibitors/pharmacology , Histones/metabolism , Humans , Models, Molecular , Myocytes, Cardiac/metabolism , Sphingosine/analogs & derivatives , Sphingosine/metabolism , Structure-Activity Relationship , Vertebrates/genetics , Vertebrates/metabolismABSTRACT
The development of husbandry practices in non-model laboratory fish used for experimental purposes has greatly benefited from the establishment of reference fish model systems, such as zebrafish and medaka. In recent years, an emerging fish - the turquoise killifish (Nothobranchius furzeri) - has been adopted by a growing number of research groups in the fields of biology of aging and ecology. With a captive life span of 4 - 8 months, this species is the shortest-lived vertebrate raised in captivity and allows the scientific community to test - in a short time - experimental interventions that can lead to alterations of the aging rate and life expectancy. Given the unique biology of this species, characterized by embryonic diapause, explosive sexual maturation, marked morphological and behavioral sexual dimorphism - and their relatively short adult life span - ad hoc husbandry practices are in urgent demand. This protocol reports a set of key husbandry measures that allow optimal turquoise killifish laboratory care, enabling the scientific community to adopt this species as a powerful laboratory animal model.
Subject(s)
Fishes , Models, Animal , Animals , LaboratoriesABSTRACT
Pmp3p-related proteins are highly conserved proteins that exist in bacteria, yeast, nematodes and plants, and its transcript is regulated in response to abiotic stresses, such as low temperature or high salinity. Pmp3p was originally identified in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and it belongs to the sensitive to Na(+) (SNA)-protein family, which comprises four members--Pmp3p/Sna1p, Sna2p, Sna3p and Sna4p. Deletion of the PMP3 gene conferred sensitivity to cytotoxic cations, whereas removal of the other SNA genes did not lead to clear phenotypic effects. It has long been believed that Pmp3p-related proteins have a common and important role in the modulation of plasma membrane potential and in the regulation of intracellular ion homeostasis. Here, we show that several growth phenotypes linked to PMP3 deletion can be modulated by the removal of specific genes involved in sphingolipid synthesis. These genetic interactions, together with lipid binding assays and epifluorescence microscopy, as well as other biochemical experiments, suggest that Pmp3p could be part of a phosphoinositide-regulated stress sensor.
