Myotonic dystrophy (DM) is a multi-systemic disease that impacts cardiac and skeletal muscle as well as the central nervous system (CNS). DM is unusual because it is an RNA-mediated disorder due to the expression of toxic microsatellite expansion RNAs that alter the activities of RNA processing factors, including the muscleblind-like (MBNL) proteins. While these mutant RNAs inhibit MBNL1 splicing activity in heart and skeletal muscles, Mbnl1 knockout mice fail to recapitulate the full-range of DM symptoms in these tissues. Here, we generate mouse Mbnl compound knockouts to test the hypothesis that Mbnl2 functionally compensates for Mbnl1 loss. Although Mbnl1−/−; Mbnl2−/− double knockouts (DKOs) are embryonic lethal, Mbnl1−/−; Mbnl2+/− mice are viable but develop cardinal features of DM muscle disease including reduced lifespan, heart conduction block, severe myotonia and progressive skeletal muscle weakness. Mbnl2 protein levels are elevated in Mbnl1−/− knockouts where Mbnl2 targets Mbnl1-regulated exons. These findings support the hypothesis that compound loss of MBNL function is a critical event in DM pathogenesis and provide novel mouse models to investigate additional pathways disrupted in this RNA-mediated disease.

Background Cardiac hypertrophy is a common response to circulatory or neurohumoral stressors as a mechanism to augment contractility. When the heart is under sustained stress, the hypertrophic response can evolve into decompensated heart failure, although the mechanism(s) underlying this transition remain largely unknown. Because phosphorylation of cardiac myosin light chain 2 (MLC2v), bound to myosin at the head-rod junction, facilitates actin-myosin interactions and enhances contractility, we hypothesized that phosphorylation of MLC2v plays a role in adaptation of the heart to stress. We previously identified an enzyme that predominantly phosphorylates MLC2v in cardiomyocytes, cardiac-MLCK (cMLCK); yet the role(s) played by cMLCK in regulating cardiac function in health and disease remain to be determined. Methods and Results We found that pressure-overload induced by transaortic constriction in wildtype mice reduced phosphorylated-MLC2v levels by ~40% and cMLCK levels by ~85%. To examine how a reduction in cMLCK and the corresponding reduction in pMLC2v affect function, we generated Mylk3 gene-targeted mice as well as transgenic mice overexpressing cMLCK specifically in cardiomyocytes. Pressure-overload led to severe heart failure in cMLCK knockout mice, but not in mice with cMLCK overexpression in which cMLCK protein synthesis exceeded degradation. The reduction in cMLCK protein during pressure-overload was attenuated by inhibition of ubiquitin-proteasome protein degradation systems. Conclusions Our results suggest the novel idea that accelerated cMLCK-protein turnover by the ubiquitin-proteasome system underlie the transition from compensated hypertrophy to decompensated heart failure due to reduced phosphorylation of MLC2v.