MuRF1-dependent regulation of systemic carbohydrate metabolism as revealed from transgenic mouse studies. Mus musculus

Under various pathophysiological muscle-wasting conditions like diabetes and starvation, a family of ubiquitin ligases, including MuRF1 (Muscle specific RING-Finger protein 1), are induced to target muscle proteins for degradation via ubiquitination. In an attempt to identify the in vivo targets of MuRF1 we have generated transgenic mouse lines overexpressing MuRF1 in a skeletal muscle specific fashion. MuRF1-TG lines were viable and had normal fertility. Characterization of their skeletal muscles did not reveal evidence for muscle wasting at 10 weeks of age. In this experiment we compared the skeletal muscle transcriptome of transgenic mice with wildtypes. Keywords: MuRF1 transgene overexpression Overall design: Transcriptional profiling was performed on an Affymetrix Mouse Genome 430 2.0 Array chip. In brief, total RNA from quadriceps was prepared (Quiagen kit RNAeasy kit), reverse transcribed with Superscript II (Invitrogen BRL) and labeled and hybridized as described in the Affymetrix manual. Two pairs of TG/WT at 12 weeks of age were compared.