Showing posts with label Myotonic dystrophy type 2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Myotonic dystrophy type 2. Show all posts

Thursday, December 15, 2016

Review highlights role of zebrafish and Drosophila studies in understanding muscular dystrophies

Plantié E, Migocka-Patrzałek M, Daczewska M, Jagla K. Model organisms in the fight against muscular dystrophy: lessons from drosophila and Zebrafish. Molecules. 2015 Apr 9;20(4):6237-53. PMID: 25859781.

From the abstract: "Muscular dystrophies (MD) are a heterogeneous group of genetic disorders that cause muscle weakness, abnormal contractions and muscle wasting, often leading to premature death. More than 30 types of MD have been described so far; those most thoroughly studied are Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) and congenital MDs. ... To improve our knowledge of how MD-caused muscle defects arise and to find efficacious therapeutic treatments, different animal models have been generated and applied. Among these, simple non-mammalian Drosophila and zebrafish models have proved most useful. This review discusses how zebrafish and Drosophila MD have helped to identify genetic determinants of MDs and design innovative therapeutic strategies with a special focus on DMD, DM1 and congenital MDs."

Monday, December 12, 2016

New fly model of myotonic dystrophy type 2

Yu Z, Goodman LD, Shieh SY, Min M, Teng X, Zhu Y, Bonini NM. A fly model for the CCUG-repeat expansion of myotonic dystrophy type 2 reveals a novel interaction with MBNL1. Hum Mol Genet. 2015 Feb 15;24(4):954-62. PMID: 25305073.

From the abstract: "Expanded non-coding RNA repeats of CUG and CCUG are the underlying genetic causes for myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) and type 2 (DM2), respectively. A gain-of-function of these pathogenic repeat expansions is mediated at least in part by their abnormal interactions with RNA-binding proteins such as MBNL1 and resultant loss of activity of these proteins. To study pathogenic mechanisms of CCUG-repeat expansions in an animal model, we created a fly model of DM2 that expresses pure, uninterrupted CCUG-repeat expansions ranging from 16 to 720 repeats in length. We show that this fly model for DM2 recapitulates key features of human DM2 including RNA repeat-induced toxicity, ribonuclear foci formation and changes in alternative splicing. ... Our results suggest a novel mechanism for interaction between the pathogenic RNA repeat expansions of myotonic dystrophy and MBNL1."