The effect of Nebulin-Deficiency on Skeletal Muscle

Nebulin is a giant filamentous protein that is coextensive with the actin filaments of the skeletal muscle sarcomere. Nebulin mutations are the main cause of nemaline myopathy (NEM), with typical NEM adult patients having low expression of nebulin, yet the roles of nebulin in adult muscle remain poorly understood. To establish nebulin’s functional roles in adult muscle we performed studies on a novel conditional nebulin KO (Neb cKO) mouse model in which nebulin deletion was driven by the muscle creatine kinase (MCK) promotor. Neb cKO mice are born with high nebulin levels in their skeletal muscle but within weeks after birth nebulin expression rapidly falls to barely detectable levels Surprisingly, a large fraction of the mice survives to adulthood with low nebulin levels (<5% of control), contain nemaline rods, and undergo fiber-type switching towards oxidative types. These microarrays investigate the changes in gene expression when nebulin is deficient. Two skeletal muscle groups were studied: Quadriceps (which is markedly smaller in the Neb cKO mice relative to control) and Soleus (which is not significantly smaller in the Neb cKO relative to control). Six biological replicates for each muscle group were selected; all are age-matched males.