Title:Roles of SUMOylation in Heart Development and Cardiovascular Diseases
Volume: 16
Issue: 10
Author(s): L. Zhang, T.-H. Yang and D. W.-C. Li
Affiliation:
Keywords:
SUMOylation, mitochondrion, SERCA2a, HDAC, heart failure.
Abstract: Heart is an extremely important organ, and cardiovascular
disorders emerge as primary life-threatening disease in human life. Aberrant
post-translational modifications (PTMs) on cardiac proteins are closely
correlated with pathological abnormalities in heart. SUMOylation, one of the
most prevalent PTMs with thousands of substrates throughout the cell
including critical subcellular organelles, has been shown to precisely finetune
the cell survival and proliferation during heart development, and
delicately control the function of mitochondrion and sarcoplasmic reticulum
in physiological heart functioning. The silver lining is pathologically cardiacspecific
SUMOylation being considered as target for cardiovascular disease
intervention and treatment. Here, we summarize the recent progress in heart-specific
functions of the SUMOylation pathway. In particular, we discuss the biological significance of
SUMO conjugation/deconjugation during heart development, and in physiological
cardiovascular health involving cardiac mitochondrial function, cardiac contractility, stress
adaption and protein homeostasis. We also discuss the crosstalks between sumoylation and
other post-translational modifications such as acetylation and ubiquitination. These
crosstalks not only shed light to our understanding of the regulatory mechanisms on
cardiovascular disorders but also contributes to their future therapy.
