Functional and metabolic remodelling in GLUT4-deficient hearts confers hyper-responsiveness to substrate intervention

Abstract

Impaired glucose uptake is associated with both cardiac hypertrophy and contractile dysfunction, but whether there are common underlying mechanisms linking these conditions is yet to be determined. Using a 'gene dose' Cre-Lox GLUT4-deficient murine model, we examined the effect of suppressed glucose availability on global myocardial gene expression and glycolysis substrate bypass on the function of isolated perfused hearts. Performance of hearts from 22- to 60-week-old male GLUT4 knockout (KO, >95% reduction in GLUT4), GLUT4 knockdown (KD, 85% reduction in cardiac GLUT4) and C57Bl/6 wild-type (WT) controls was measured ex vivo in Langendorff mode perfusion. DNA microarray was used to profile..