Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Jun 9;141(23):1940-1942.
doi: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.119.043530. Epub 2020 Jun 8.

Homotypic Fusion Generates Multinucleated Cardiomyocytes in the Murine Heart

Shah R Ali  1 , Ivan Menendez-Montes  1 , Jane Warshaw  1 , Feng Xiao  1 , Hesham A Sadek  1   2   3   4
Affiliations

Homotypic Fusion Generates Multinucleated Cardiomyocytes in the Murine Heart

Shah R Ali et al. Circulation. .
No abstract available

Keywords: Cre recombinase; cardiac; cell fusion; cell nucleus; mice; mitosis; myocytes; postnatal development.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure.
Figure.. Homotypic fusion between cardiomyocytes occurs in the postnatal mouse heart.
A, Myh6-MerCreMer;R26-Confetti+/− schematic showing the outcome of each recombination event. B, List of all possible fusion outcomes. C, Cartoon schematic of detectable fusion outcomes. D, Experimental strategy. E, A zoomed-out view of a heart section from a labeled heart showing single-color recombinations and a red fluorescent protein (RFP)/nuclear (n) green fluorescent protein (GFP) fused cardiomyocyte (white box). Scale bar, 50 μm. E’, Zoom view of the fused RFP/nGFP cardiomyocyte from E. Scale bar, 10 μm. E”, Imaris 3-dimensional (3D) reconstruction of the fused cell from E’. F, Example of YFP-nGFP fused cardiomyocyte. Scale bar, 10 μm. F’, Imaris 3D reconstruction of F based on confocal imaging shows that both nGFP nuclei are harbored within the yellow fluorescent protein (YFP) cytoplasm. G, Example of YFP-RFP fused cardiomyocyte. Scale bar, 10 μm. G’, Imaris 3D reconstruction of G. H, Isolated cardiomyocyte nucleation count at different time points with representative images of each type of cardiomyocyte. I, Overall percentage of fused cardiomyocytes (as a fraction of labeled cardiomyocytes). J, Overall frequency of each Confetti recombination outcome at different time points. K, Overall schematic highlighting the main finding of the study. Error bars show mean±SD. One-way ANOVA tests were used to calculate significance unless otherwise noted. e Indicates embryonic day; and P, postnatal day.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Soonpaa MH, Kim KK, Pajak L, Franklin M, Field LJ. Cardiomyocyte DNA synthesis and binucleation during murine development. Am J Physiol. 1996;271(pt 2):H2183–H2189. doi: 10.1152/ajpheart.1996.271.5.H2183 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Alkass K, Panula J, Westman M, Wu TD, Guerquin-Kern JL, Bergmann O. No evidence for cardiomyocyte number expansion in preadolescent mice. Cell. 2015;163:1026–1036. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2015.10.035 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Alvarez-Dolado M, Pardal R, Garcia-Verdugo JM, Fike JR, Lee HO, Pfeffer K, Lois C, Morrison SJ, Alvarez-Buylla A. Fusion of bone-marrow-derived cells with Purkinje neurons, cardiomyocytes and hepatocytes. Nature. 2003;425:968–973. doi: 10.1038/nature02069 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Snippert HJ, van der Flier LG, Sato T, van Es JH, van den Born M, Kroon-Veenboer C, Barker N, Klein AM, van Rheenen J, Simons BD, et al. Intestinal crypt homeostasis results from neutral competition between symmetrically dividing Lgr5 stem cells. Cell. 2010;143:134–144. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2010.09.016 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Sawamiphak S, Kontarakis Z, Filosa A, Reischauer S, Stainier DYR. Transient cardiomyocyte fusion regulates cardiac development in zebrafish. Nat Commun. 2017;8:1525. doi: 10.1038/s41467-017-01555-8 - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Publication types