Co-expression of calcium and hERG potassium channels reduces the incidence of proarrhythmic events

Abstract

Aims
Cardiac electrical activity is extraordinarily robust. However, when it goes wrong it can have fatal consequences. Electrical activity in the heart is controlled by the carefully orchestrated activity of more than a dozen different ion conductances. Whilst there is considerable variability in cardiac ion channel expression levels between individuals, studies in rodents have indicated that there are modules of ion channels whose expression co-vary. The aim of this study was to investigate whether meta-analytic co-expression analysis of large-scale gene expression data sets could identify modules of co-expressed cardiac ion channel genes in human hearts that are of functional importance.

Methods and Results
Meta-analysis of 3653 public human RNA-seq datasets identified a strong correlation between expression of CACNA1C (L-type calcium current, ICaL) and KCN...

摘要

研究目的
心脏电活动具有极强的鲁棒性，一旦出现异常便可能引发致命后果。心脏的电活动由十余种不同离子电导的精密协同活动所调控。尽管个体间心脏离子通道的表达水平存在显著差异，但基于啮齿类动物的研究表明，存在若干组离子通道，其表达水平呈现共变异特征。本研究旨在探讨：针对大规模基因表达数据集开展荟萃分析共表达分析，是否能够在人类心脏中鉴定出具备功能重要性的共表达心脏离子通道基因模块。

材料与方法及结果
本研究对3653例公开人类RNA测序（RNA-seq）数据集进行荟萃分析，发现CACNA1C（编码L型钙电流ICaL）的表达与KCN...之间存在显著相关性。