Increasing O-GlcNAcylation level on organ culture of soleus modulates the calcium activation parameters of muscle fibers

PLoS One. 2012;7(10):e48218. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0048218. Epub 2012 Oct 24.

Abstract

O-N-acetylglucosaminylation is a reversible post-translational modification which presents a dynamic and highly regulated interplay with phosphorylation. New insights suggest that O-GlcNAcylation might be involved in striated muscle physiology, in particular in contractile properties such as the calcium activation parameters. By the inhibition of O-GlcNAcase, we investigated the effect of the increase of soleus O-GlcNAcylation level on the contractile properties by establishing T/pCa relationships. We increased the O-GlcNAcylation level on soleus biopsies performing an organ culture of soleus treated or not with PUGNAc or Thiamet-G, two O-GlcNAcase inhibitors. The enhancement of O-GlcNAcylation pattern was associated with an increase of calcium affinity on slow soleus skinned fibers. Analysis of the glycoproteins pattern showed that this effect is solely due to O-GlcNAcylation of proteins extracted from skinned biopsies. We also characterized the O-GlcNAcylated contractile proteins using a proteomic approach, and identified among others troponin T and I as being O-GlcNAc modified. We quantified the variation of O-GlcNAc level on all these identified proteins, and showed that several regulatory contractile proteins, predominantly fast isoforms, presented a drastic increase in their O-GlcNAc level. Since the only slow isoform of contractile protein presenting an increase of O-GlcNAc level was MLC2, the effect of enhanced O-GlcNAcylation pattern on calcium activation parameters could involve the O-GlcNAcylation of sMLC2, without excluding that an unidentified O-GlcNAc proteins, such as TnC, could be potentially involved in this mechanism. All these data strongly linked O-GlcNAcylation to the modulation of contractile activity of skeletal muscle.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Acetylglucosamine / metabolism*
  • Animals
  • Calcium / metabolism*
  • Male
  • Muscle, Skeletal / metabolism*
  • Organ Culture Techniques*
  • Rats

Substances

  • Calcium
  • Acetylglucosamine

Grants and funding

This work was supported by grants from the Association Française contre les Myopathies (n°13890) and the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (4800000580). The funders had no role in study design, data collectionand analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.