Myostatin in idiopathic inflammatory myopathies: Serum assessment and disease activity.

AIMS: In idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIM), disease activity is difficult to assess, and IIM may induce severe muscle damage, especially in immune-mediated necrotising myopathies (IMNM) and inclusion body myositis (IBM). We hypothesise that myostatin, a negative regulator of muscle mass, could be a new biomarker of disease activity and/or muscle damage. METHODS: Prospective assessment of myostatin protein level in 447 IIM serum samples (dermatomyositis [DM], n = 157; IBM, n = 72; IMNM, n = 125; and antisynthetase syndrome [ASyS], n = 93) and 59 healthy donors (HD) was performed by ELISA. A gene transcript analysis was also carried out on 18 IIM muscle biopsies and six controls to analyse myostatin and myostatin pathway-related gene expression. RESULTS: IIM patients had lower myostatin circulating protein levels and gene expression compared to HD (2379 [1490; 3678] pg/ml vs 4281 [3169; 5787] pg/ml; p < 0.0001 and log2FC = -1.83; p = 0.0005, respectively). Myostatin-related gene expression varied accordingly. Based on the Physician Global Assessment, inactive IIM patients showed higher myostatin levels than active ones. This was the case for all IIM subgroups, except IMNM where low myostatin levels were maintained (2186 [1235; 3815] vs 2349 [1518; 3922] pg/ml; p = 0.4). CONCLUSIONS: Myostatin protein and RNA levels are decreased in all IIM patients, and protein levels correlate with disease activity. Inactive ASyS and DM patients have higher myostatin levels than active patients. Myostatin could be a marker of disease activity in these subgroups. However, IMNM patients do not have significant increase in myostatin levels after disease remission. This may highlight a new pathological disease mechanism in IMNM patients.

Contrasted patterns of crossover and non-crossover at Arabidopsis thaliana meiotic recombination hotspots.

The vast majority of meiotic recombination events (crossovers (COs) and non-crossovers (NCOs)) cluster in narrow hotspots surrounded by large regions devoid of recombinational activity. Here, using a new molecular approach in plants, called "pollen-typing", we detected and characterized hundreds of CO and NCO molecules in two different hotspot regions in Arabidopsis thaliana. This analysis revealed that COs are concentrated in regions of a few kilobases where their rates reach up to 50 times the genome average. The hotspots themselves tend to cluster in regions less than 8 kilobases in size with overlapping CO distribution. Non-crossover (NCO) events also occurred in the two hotspots but at very different levels (local CO/NCO ratios of 1/1 and 30/1) and their track lengths were quite small (a few hundred base pairs). We also showed that the ZMM protein MSH4 plays a role in CO formation and somewhat unexpectedly we also found that it is involved in the generation of NCOs but with a different level of effect. Finally, factors acting in cis and in trans appear to shape the rate and distribution of COs at meiotic recombination hotspots.

Characterization of meiotic non-crossover molecules from Arabidopsis thaliana pollen.

Meiotic recombination is essential for proper segregation of homologous chromosomes and thus for formation of viable gametes. Recombination generates either crossovers (COs), which are reciprocal exchanges between chromosome segments, or gene conversion not associated with crossovers (NCOs). Both kinds of events occur in narrow regions (less than 10 kb) called hotspots, which are distributed along chromosomes. While NCOs may represent a large fraction of meiotic recombination events in plants, as in many other higher eukaryotes, they have been poorly characterized due to the technical difficulty of detecting them. Here, we present a powerful approach, based on allele-specific PCR amplification of single molecules from pollen genomic DNA, allowing detection, quantification and characterization of NCO events arising at low frequencies at recombination hotspots.