Iyer Chitra C, McGovern Vicki L, Wise Dawnne O, Glass David J, Burghes Arthur H M
Department of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA.
Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Neuromuscul Disord. 2014 May;24(5):436-44. doi: 10.1016/j.nmd.2014.02.007. Epub 2014 Feb 25.
Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is an autosomal recessive disease causing degeneration of lower motor neurons and muscle atrophy. One therapeutic avenue for SMA is targeting signaling pathways in muscle to ameliorate atrophy. Muscle Atrophy F-box, MAFbx, and Muscle RING Finger 1, MuRF1, are muscle-specific ubiquitin ligases upregulated in skeletal and cardiac muscle during atrophy. Homozygous knock-out of MAFbx or MuRF1 causes muscle sparing in adult mice subjected to atrophy by denervation. We wished to determine whether blockage of the major muscle atrophy pathways by deletion of MAFbx or MuRF1 in a mouse model of SMA would improve the phenotype. Deletion of MAFbx in the Δ7 SMA mouse model had no effect on the weight and the survival of the mice while deletion of MuRF1 was deleterious. MAFbx(-/-)-SMA mice showed a significant alteration in fiber size distribution tending towards larger fibers. In skeletal and cardiac tissue MAFbx and MuRF1 transcripts were upregulated whereas MuRF2 and MuRF3 levels were unchanged in Δ7 SMA mice. We conclude that deletion of the muscle ubiquitin ligases does not improve the phenotype of a Δ7 SMA mouse. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that the beneficial effect of HDAC inhibitors is mediated through inhibition of MAFbx and MuRF1.
脊髓性肌萎缩症(SMA)是一种常染色体隐性疾病,可导致下运动神经元变性和肌肉萎缩。SMA的一种治疗途径是针对肌肉中的信号通路来改善萎缩。肌肉萎缩F盒蛋白(MAFbx)和肌肉环形指蛋白1(MuRF1)是肌肉特异性泛素连接酶,在萎缩过程中,它们在骨骼肌和心肌中上调。在成年小鼠中,通过去神经支配使其发生萎缩,MAFbx或MuRF1的纯合敲除可使肌肉得到保留。我们希望确定,在SMA小鼠模型中,通过缺失MAFbx或MuRF1来阻断主要的肌肉萎缩途径是否会改善表型。在Δ7 SMA小鼠模型中,缺失MAFbx对小鼠的体重和存活没有影响,而缺失MuRF1则是有害的。MAFbx(-/-)-SMA小鼠的纤维大小分布有显著改变,趋向于更大的纤维。在骨骼肌和心脏组织中,MAFbx和MuRF1的转录本上调,而在Δ7 SMA小鼠中,MuRF2和MuRF3的水平没有变化。我们得出结论,缺失肌肉泛素连接酶并不能改善Δ7 SMA小鼠的表型。此外,组蛋白去乙酰化酶抑制剂的有益作用似乎不太可能是通过抑制MAFbx和MuRF1来介导的。