Characterization of naturally occurring myosin heavy chain antisense mRNA in rat heart

Abstract

Analysis of mRNA by Northern blot and reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction demonstrated the expression of sense and considerable amounts of naturally occurring antisense mRNA for β-myosin heavy chain (MHC) and α-MHC in the neonatal rat heart: antisense MHC mRNA expression of α-MHC and β-MHC was approximately half of the corresponding sense MHC mRNA expression. Using a computational approach, we could identify a reverse Pol II promoter in the β-MHC gene. Both sense and antisense MHC mRNA demonstrated similar sizes of approximately 6,000 bp in the Northern blot. Alpha-MHC antisense mRNA consisted of approximately 3,700 bp of complementary exon sequences and β-MHC consisted of approximately 2,700 bp, suggesting a higher probability of α-MHC mRNA dimerization. Hence, sense mRNA transcripts and protein of α-MHC should exist at different relative levels in the neonatal state. In fact, the relative proportion of α-MHC was 52.0 ± 2.6% on the sense mRNA but only 36.3 ± 1.8% on the protein level. Because of its high abundance in the heart, we suggest that in the neonatal heart naturally occurring antisense mRNA may play a role in the regulation of MHC expression and, therefore, in the control of the energetical and contractile behaviour of the heart. J. Cell. Biochem. 70:110–120, 1998. © 1998 Wiley-Liss, Inc.