One-sentence summary:This study shows a novel function of GAPDH in homeostatic control of the heart, which is disturbed and results in cardiac hypertrophy with pathological stressors.
Abstract:Pathological stressors disrupt cellular and organ homeostasis, causing various diseases. We discovered a novel role for glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) in the pathological growth response of the heart, independent of its functions in glycolysis and cell death. In a cellular model for cardiac hypertrophy, endothelin-1 elicited nuclear translocation of GAPDH and activation of p300 histone acetyl-transferase (HAT), followed by activation of myocyte enhancer factor 2 (MEF2). GAPDH nuclear translocation and p300 HAT activation was also identified in rodent pathological hypertrophied hearts. The hypertrophy was markedly ameliorated by molecular and pharmacological interventions that antagonize the nuclear GAPDH pathway, including a novel antagonist selective to its nuclear function. This pathway may be the key to stress response/homeostatic control, and thus the potential therapeutic target for stressassociated diseases.
Main Text:Besides glycolytic function, glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) translocate to the nuclei in response to stress where it has been described to mainly regulate cell death (1-4).The nuclear GAPDH pathway is triggered by a specific oxidation/S-nitrosylation of GAPDH at cysteine-150, which enables the interaction of the pool of GAPDH with Siah1 (5, 6). The protein complex translocates to the nucleus where GAPDH can affect p300, p53 and p53 upregulated modulator of apoptosis (PUMA) resulting in cell death; in this cascade, only a small fraction of GAPDH is converted to a signaling molecule, and the overall change in cytosolic and glycolytic GAPDH is negligible (5, 7). Despite it is involvement in cell death, it remains unclear whether and how this cascade plays general and diverse roles.The heart is among the organs with the highest expression of GAPDH (8), which has been simply thought to play a "house keeping" glycolytic role in this organ. The heart develops hypertrophy or abnormal growth in response to pathological stress, which can ultimately result in the organ failure (9). Indeed, cardiac hypertrophy and failure is a leading cause of death worldwide, imposing an enormous burden on society (10). Although p300 has been implicated in this pathophysiology (11,12), the overall significance and its regulatory mechanism remain elusive. We hypothesize that nuclear GAPDH-p300 signaling may mediate this stress response, which disrupts critical homeostasis of cardiac myocytes and causes hypertrophic growth.To address this question, we used a mouse model of pressure-overload cardiac hypertrophy induced by transverse aortic constriction (TAC) (13). In this model, cardiac hypertrophy is developed at 7 to 10 days after TAC, transitioning to failure in 63 days after TAC.The histone acetyl transferase (HAT) activity of p300 was markedly increased in TAC hearts at Reagents and RR compound...