Paxillin and Focal Adhesion Kinase (FAK) Regulate Cardiac Contractility in the Zebrafish Heart

An orchestrated interplay of adaptor and signaling proteins at mechano-sensitive sites is essential to maintain cardiac contractility and when defective leads to heart failure. We recently showed that Integrin-linked Kinase (ILK), ß-Parvin and PINCH form the IPP-complex to grant tuned Protein Kinase B (PKB) signaling in the heart. Loss of one of the IPP-complex components results in destabilization of the whole complex, defective PKB signaling and finally heart failure. Two components of IPP, ILK and ß-Parvin directly bind to Paxillin; however, the impact of this direct interaction on the maintenance of heart function is not known yet. Here, we show that targeted gene inactivation of Paxillin results in progressive decrease of cardiac contractility and heart failure in zebrafish without affecting IPP-complex stability and PKB phosphorylation. However, we found that Paxillin deficiency leads to the destabilization of its known binding partner Focal Adhesion Kinase (FAK) and vice versa resulting in degradation of Vinculin and thereby heart failure. Our findings highlight an essential role of Paxillin and FAK in controlling cardiac contractility via the recruitment of Vinculin to mechano-sensitive sites in cardiomyocytes.

In vivo characterization of human myofibrillar myopathy genes in zebrafish

Myofibrillar myopathies (MFM) are progressive diseases of human heart and skeletal muscle with a severe impact on life quality and expectancy of affected patients. Although recently several disease genes for myofibrillar myopathies could be identified, today most genetic causes and particularly the associated mechanisms and signaling events that lead from the mutation to the disease phenotype are still mostly unknown. To assess whether the zebrafish is a suitable model system to validate MFM candidate genes using targeted antisense-mediated knock-down strategies, we here specifically inactivated known human MFM disease genes and evaluated the resulting muscular and cardiac phenotypes functionally and structurally. Consistently, targeted ablation of MFM genes in zebrafish led to compromised skeletal muscle function mostly due to myofibrillar degeneration as well as severe heart failure. Similar to what was shown in MFM patients, MFM gene-deficient zebrafish showed pronounced gene-specific phenotypic and structural differences. In summary, our results indicate that the zebrafish is a suitable model to functionally and structurally evaluate novel MFM disease genes in vivo.

Aciculin interacts with filamin C and Xin and is essential for myofibril assembly, remodeling and maintenance

Filamin C (FLNc) and Xin actin-binding repeat-containing proteins (XIRPs) are multi-adaptor proteins that are mainly expressed in cardiac and skeletal muscles and which play important roles in the assembly and repair of myofibrils and their attachment to the membrane. We identified the dystrophin-binding protein aciculin (also known as phosphoglucomutase-like protein 5, PGM5) as a new interaction partner of FLNc and Xin. All three proteins colocalized at intercalated discs of cardiac muscle and myotendinous junctions of skeletal muscle, whereas FLNc and aciculin also colocalized in mature Z-discs. Bimolecular fluorescence complementation experiments in developing cultured mammalian skeletal muscle cells demonstrated that Xin and aciculin also interact in FLNc-containing immature myofibrils and areas of myofibrillar remodeling and repair induced by electrical pulse stimulation (EPS). Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) experiments showed that aciculin is a highly dynamic and mobile protein. Aciculin knockdown in myotubes led to failure in myofibril assembly, alignment and membrane attachment, and a massive reduction in myofibril number. A highly similar phenotype was found upon depletion of aciculin in zebrafish embryos. Our results point to a thus far unappreciated, but essential, function of aciculin in myofibril formation, maintenance and remodeling.