Functional Antagonism Between CELF and Mbnl Proteins in Cytoplasm and Nucleus [muscle]

The CUG-BP and ETR-3-like factor 1 (Celf1) RNA binding protein plays an important role in heart and muscle development, and is over-expressed in the disease myotonic dystrophy. Celf1 has known roles in regulation of RNA splicing, RNA stability, and protein translation. To identify transcriptome-wide targets of the Celf1 protein in heart, we performed RNA-Seq of polyA+ RNA from mice inducibly expressing Celf1 in the muscle. Overall design: Mice were engineered to express the reverse tetracycline trans-activator (rtTA2S-M2) from the rate myosin light chain 1/3 promoter/enhancer, and an N-terminal Flag-tagged version of the LYLQ isoform of human Celf1 from a tet-inducible promoter. Mice were fed doxycycline to induce Celf1 expression in muscle, and gastrocnemius muscles were harvested from 3 mice each at 12 hour, 24 hour, 72 hour, and 7 day time points. To account for potential doxycycline-dependent effects, control mice were fed doxycycline for 72 hours but these mice did not contain the tet-inducible Celf1 cassette. In total, 15 gastrocnemius samples were analyzed by RNA-Seq.