Figure 1

Cardiac phenotypes of cardiomyocyte-specific Rubicon-deficient mice after pressure overload. (a) Knockout efficiency of Rubicon in Rubicon^−/− hearts at baseline. LV homogenates from Rubicon^+/+ and Rubicon^−/− mice were subjected to western blot analysis (N = 4). Student’s t-test was used for analysis. A cropped blot is displayed and a full-length blot is presented in Supplementary Fig. S3a. (b) Trans-TAC pressure gradient was estimated from the difference of blood pressure between upper limbs. (c,d) Trans-thoracic M-mode echocardiographic analysis one week after transverse aortic constriction (TAC). Representative images are shown in (c). Scale bars: 0.2 s and 5 mm, respectively. Echocardiographic measurements are shown in (d). LVDd, end-diastolic internal dimension of left ventricle (LV); LVDs, end-systolic internal dimension of LV; FS, fractional shortening of LV dimension. (e) Physiological parameters one week after TAC. WHW, whole heart weight; TL, tibia length; LVW, left ventricle weight; LungW, lung weight. N = 10 (sham-Rubicon^+/+), 6 (sham-Rubicon^−/−), 10 (TAC-Rubicon^+/+) or 9 (TAC-Rubicon^−/−) and one-way ANOVA for analysis was used in (b) and (c). Open and closed bars indicate Rubicon^+/+ and Rubicon^−/−, respectively. Data are expressed as the mean ± s.e.m.