• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
Monday, October 6, 2025
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News Biology

New gene identified in arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
May 24, 2022
in Biology
Reading Time: 3 mins read
0
Arrhytmogenic cardiomyopathy
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

Researchers from the group of  Eva van Rooij used advanced sequencing technology to better understand the heart disease arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy, in which heart muscle tissue is replaced by fat cells. Using explanted human hearts, they found regions in which heart muscle was actively degenerated and identified a new gene, ZBTB11, that drives heart muscle cell degradation. The results were published in Cardiovascular Research on 17 May 2022.

Arrhytmogenic cardiomyopathy

Credit: GPA Lacraz, copyright Hubrecht Institute

Researchers from the group of  Eva van Rooij used advanced sequencing technology to better understand the heart disease arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy, in which heart muscle tissue is replaced by fat cells. Using explanted human hearts, they found regions in which heart muscle was actively degenerated and identified a new gene, ZBTB11, that drives heart muscle cell degradation. The results were published in Cardiovascular Research on 17 May 2022.

Arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy (ACM) is a familial heart disease in which heart muscle tissue is replaced by fat cells. It can lead to life threatening, irregular heartbeats. Currently, no therapy exists to cure arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy and patients may ultimately need a heart transplantation. Therefore, the group of Eva van Rooij at the Hubrecht Institute collaborated with the UMC Utrecht with the aim to better understand the process of heart muscle degeneration in ACM, to ultimately contribute to the identification of new therapeutic targets to treat the disease.

Local differences
Previous studies on ACM used methods that take a snapshot of the gene expression in diseased tissue to aim at understanding what happens in the disease, but lacked the spatial resolution that is required to identify local differences within the heart. Therefore, the group of Eva van Rooij collaborated with the group of Alexander van Oudenaarden to use a technique called Tomo-Seq, that enabled the researchers to study gene expression within different areas of the heart. It turned out that knowing the location of the cells with changed gene activity was key to the discovery of novel areas of heart muscle degeneration.

Human hearts
The researchers used explanted hearts from ACM patients that received a heart transplantation. Heart disease is often studied in cultured cells or animal models, since the use of patient heart tissue is usually not possible. However, due to a collaboration with Aryan Vink from the Pathology Department of UMC Utrecht, the researchers had access to one of the largest and best documented heart tissue biobanks of the world. This gave them the unique opportunity to study the disease process in patient material. The researchers were able to closely look at the patient heart muscle cells that are degenerating, and identified new genes that may play an important role in this process. Among these genes is the transcription factor ZBTB11, a gene that was not previously known to be involved in arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy.

Fat cells
The gene ZBTB11 is specifically expressed in the heart muscle cells that are close to the fat cells. The researchers showed that the activity of ZBTB11 induced degeneration of heart muscle cells, a process that is key in arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy. This indicates that the fatty regions in the heart induce damage to the neighboring heart muscle cells. In the future, the researchers aim to study if heart muscle damage can be slowed down or even reversed in arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy.

~~~

Publication
Spatial transcriptomics unveils ZBTB11 as a regulator of cardiomyocyte degeneration in arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy. Cornelis J. Boogerd, Grégory P.A. Lacraz, Ábel Vértesy, Sebastiaan J. van Kampen, Ilaria Perini, Hesther de Ruiter, Danielle Versteeg, Andreas Brodehl, Petra van der Kraak, Mauro Giacca, Nicolaas de Jonge, Jan Philipp Junker, Alexander van Oudenaarden, Aryan Vink, Eva van Rooij. Cardiovascular Research 2022.
 

Eva van Rooij is group leader at the Hubrecht Institute and professor of Molecular Cardiology at the University Medical Center Utrecht.

About the Hubrecht Institute
The Hubrecht Institute is a research institute focused on developmental and stem cell biology. It encompasses 19 research groups that perform fundamental and multidisciplinary research, both in healthy systems and disease models. The Hubrecht Institute is a research institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), situated on Utrecht Science Park. Since 2008, the institute is affiliated with the UMC Utrecht, advancing the translation of research to the clinic. The Hubrecht Institute has a partnership with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). For more information, visit http://www.hubrecht.eu.

 



Journal

Cardiovascular Research

DOI

10.1093/cvr/cvac072

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Human tissue samples

Article Title

Spatial transcriptomics unveils ZBTB11 as a regulator of cardiomyocyte degeneration in arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy

Article Publication Date

16-May-2022

Share12Tweet8Share2ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

blank

Revolutionary Classifier Uncovers Prokaryotic Efflux Proteins

October 6, 2025
N6-methyladenosine Enhances Pork Muscle Quality via Myofiber Regulation

N6-methyladenosine Enhances Pork Muscle Quality via Myofiber Regulation

October 6, 2025

Whole Genome Analysis Uncovers Variations in Goat Pigmentation

October 5, 2025

LINC01547 Enhances Pancreatic Cancer and Chemoresistance

October 5, 2025

POPULAR NEWS

  • New Study Reveals the Science Behind Exercise and Weight Loss

    New Study Reveals the Science Behind Exercise and Weight Loss

    95 shares
    Share 38 Tweet 24
  • New Study Indicates Children’s Risk of Long COVID Could Double Following a Second Infection – The Lancet Infectious Diseases

    93 shares
    Share 37 Tweet 23
  • New Insights Suggest ALS May Be an Autoimmune Disease

    71 shares
    Share 28 Tweet 18
  • Physicists Develop Visible Time Crystal for the First Time

    75 shares
    Share 30 Tweet 19

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

HUWE1 Loss Drives Stemness, Drug Resistance in CRC

Accounting for Albedo in Carbon Market Protocols

Designing Relationships in Intrinsically Disordered Proteins

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Success! An email was just sent to confirm your subscription. Please find the email now and click 'Confirm' to start subscribing.

Join 63 other subscribers
  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.