Familial hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (FHC) is a disease characterized by ventricular hypertrophy, fibrosis, and aberrant systolic and/or diastolic function. Our laboratories have previously developed two mouse models that affect cardiac performance. One mouse model encodes an FHC-associated mutation in α-tropomyosin: Glu → Gly at amino acid 180, designated as Tm180. These mice display a phenotype that is characteristic of FHC, including severe cardiac hypertrophy with fibrosis and impaired physiological performance. The other model was a gene knockout of phospholamban (PLN KO), a regulator of calcium uptake in the sarcoplasmic reticulum of cardiomyocytes; these hearts exhibit hypercontractility with no pathological abnormalities. Previous work in our laboratories shows that when mice were genetically crossed between the PLN KO and Tm180, the progeny (PLN KO/Tm180) display a rescued hypertrophic phenotype with improved morphology and cardiac function. To understand the changes in gene expression that occur in these models undergoing cardiac remodeling (Tm180, PLN KO, PLN KO/Tm180, and nontransgenic control mice), we conducted microarray analyses of left ventricular tissue at 4 and 12 mo of age. Expression profiling reveals that 1,187 genes changed expression in direct response to the three genetic models. With these 1,187 genes, 11 clusters emerged showing normalization of transcript expression in the PLN KO/Tm180 hearts. In addition, 62 transcripts are highly involved in suppression of the hypertrophic phenotype. Confirmation of the microarray analysis was conducted by quantitative RT-PCR. These results provide insight into genes that alter expression during cardiac remodeling and are active during modulation of the cardiomyopathic phenotype.
Keywords: cardiomyopathy; mouse model; phospholamban; tropomyosin.