Circulation Research 2022

Sbk2, a Newly Discovered Atrium-Enriched Regulator of Sarcomere Integrity

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In the Pijnappels lab, we have a very special cardiac cell line available to us that consists of immortalized neonatal rat cardiac cells. These cells have the unique ability to switch between noncontractile (a state where the cells can divide themselves) and contractile (functioning adult heart cells as we have in our heart that don't divide any more). In this paper we made use of this unique feature to identify a new gene that plays a crucial role in the creation of cardiomyocytes.

This new gene is called Sbk2. We found Sbk2 to be preferentially expressed in the upper chambers of the heart. With a special technique it is possible to kick out certain genes. When this was done with the Sbk2 gene, it was observed that the cardiac cells had disrupted sarcomere production. These sarcomeres are small units that give shape and strength to a heart cell.

Figure: Gene expression of the immortalized cell line. Sbk2 is one of the genes that can be seen as a small horizontal line in the leftmost plot.

 Thus, conditionally immortalized atrial cardiomyocytes are a relevant model to identify genes with an unidentified role in heart cells as exemplified by Sbk2: a regulator of atrial sarcomerogenesis.

Journal info

Article type:  Research article
Impact factor: 23.213
ISSN: 0009-7330 (print); 1524-4571 (web) 

Circulation Research is an official journal of the American Heart Association and is the official journal of the Council on Basic Cardiovascular Sciences of the American Heart Association. Circulation Research is published as a print and online journal with 24 issues per year.

Circulation Research is a forum for fundamental, mechanistic research of relevance to the cardiovascular system from various disciplines including biochemistry, biophysics, cellular biology, molecular biology, genetics, pathology, physiology, and pharmacology. The journal publishes manuscripts of the highest quality pertaining to basic cardiac and vascular biology and encourages the submission of work that uses state-of-the-art approaches to illuminate mechanisms of human disease. A special welcome is extended to translational research and to clinical research that yields fundamental insights; studies in humans or human tissues that advance our understanding of the basis of disease and the mechanism of therapies are an area of particular emphasis.