arrhythmia caused by a drosophila tropomyosin mutation is revealed using a novel optical coherence tomography instrument心律失常引起的突变果蝇原肌球蛋白是显示使用一种新颖的光学相干断层扫描仪器.pdfVIP

Arrhythmia Caused by a Drosophila Tropomyosin Mutation Is Revealed Using a Novel Optical Coherence Tomography Instrument 1 ¤ 2 2 1 Lisha Ma * , Adrian Bradu , Adrian Gh. Podoleanu , James W. Bloor 1 Cell and Developmental Biology Group, School of Biosciences, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, United Kingdom, 2 Applied Optics Group, School of Physical Sciences, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, United Kingdom Abstract Background: Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is a severe cardiac condition that causes high mortality. Many genes have been confirmed to be involved in this disease. An ideal system with which to uncover disease mechanisms would be one that can measure the changes in a wide range of cardiac activities associated with mutations in specific, diversely functional cardiac genes. Such a system needs a genetically manipulable model organism that allows in vivo measurement of cardiac phenotypes and a detecting instrument capable of recording multiple phenotype parameters. Methodology and Principal Findings: With a simple heart, a transparent body surface at larval stages and available genetic tools we chose Drosophila melanogaster as our model organism and developed for it a dual en-face/Doppler optical coherence tomography (OCT) instrument capable of recording multiple aspects of heart activity, including heart contraction cycle dynamics, ostia dynamics, heartbeat rate and rhythm, speed of heart wall movement and light reflectivity of cardiomyocytes in situ. We applied this OCT instrument to a model of Tropomyosin-associated DCM established in adult Drosophila. We show that DCM pre-exists in the larval stage and is accompanied by an arrhythmia previously unidentified