Mitochondrial contagion induced by Parkin deficiency in Drosophila hearts and its containment by suppressing mitofusin; germline Parkin knockout mouse hearts.

Dysfunctional Parkin-mediated mitophagic culling of senescent or damaged mitochondria is a major pathological process underlying Parkinson disease and a potential genetic mechanism of cardiomyopathy. Despite epidemiological associations between Parkinson disease and heart failure, the role of Parkin and mitophagic quality control in maintaining normal cardiac homeostasis is poorly understood.We used germline mutants and cardiac-specific RNA interference to interrogate Parkin regulation of cardiomyocyte mitochondria and examine functional crosstalk between mitophagy and mitochondrial dynamics in Drosophila heart tubes. Overall design: 5 wild-type mouse hearts; 4 germline Parkin knockout mouse hearts Please note that the mouse cardiac examples were an adjunct to the Drosophila studies that comprised most of the associated publication. However, mRNA-sequencing was only performed on the mouse samples, not the Drosophila heart tubes.

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