Cardiac apoptosis has been identified as one of the main precipitating factors of heart failure (HF) throughout the whole course of progressive disease. Limited to the lack of diagnostic markers and effective drug targets, cardiac apoptosis is still a major clinical challenge. Here, we reveal a potential novel therapeutic target for cardiac apoptosis. In the cause of the study, we found that KLHL38 was highly expressed in cardiac tissue of HF patients via GEO data-mining, which was further verified in the heart tissue of transverse aortic constriction mice. Meanwhile, the expression of KLHL38 is negatively correlated with myocardin protein level, which is a key cardiac apoptosis regulator. The KLHL38 overexpression obviously promoted cardiomyocyte apoptosis treated with staurosporine by facilitation of myocardin's ubiquitylation and subsequent proteasomal degradation. These findings reveal a new therapeutic target, which may provide a new theoretical foundation for the treatment of myocardial apoptosis in clinical practice.
Keywords: KLHL38; myocardial apoptosis; myocardin; proteasomal degradation; ubiquitylation.
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