Metabolic modulation regulates cardiac wall morphogenesis in zebrafish
Abstract
During cardiac development, cardiomyocytes form complex inner wall structures called trabeculae. Despite significant investigation into this process, the potential role of metabolism has not been addressed. Using single cell resolution imaging in zebrafish, we find that cardiomyocytes seeding the trabecular layer actively change their shape while compact layer cardiomyocytes remain static. We show that Erbb2 signaling, which is required for trabeculation, activates glycolysis to support changes in cardiomyocyte shape and behavior. Pharmacological inhibition of glycolysis impairs cardiac trabeculation, and cardiomyocyte-specific loss- and gain-of-function manipulations of glycolysis decrease and increase trabeculation, respectively. In addition, loss of the glycolytic enzyme pyruvate kinase M2 impairs trabeculation. Experiments with rat neonatal cardiomyocytes in culture further support these observations. Our findings reveal new roles for glycolysis in regulating cardiomyocyte behavior during cardiac wall morphogenesis.
Data availability
All data in this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files.
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Author details
Funding
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (Open-access funding)
- Didier YR Stainier
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All zebrafish husbandry was performed under standard conditions in accordance with institutional (MPG) and national ethical and animal welfare guidelines approved by the ethics committee for animal experiments at the Regional Board of Darmstadt, Germany (permit numbers B2/1017, B2/1041 and B2/1159).
Copyright
© 2019, Fukuda et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Further reading
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Experiments in zebrafish have shed new light on the relationship between development and regeneration in the heart.
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