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In recent years, the perception of Z-disc function has changed from a passive anchor for myofilaments that allows transmission of force, to a dynamic multicomplex structure, capable of sensing and transducing extracellular signals. Here, we describe a new Z-disc protein, which we named CHAP (cytoskeletal heart-enriched actin-associated protein), expressed in differentiating heart and skeletal muscle in vitro and in vivo. Interestingly, in addition to its sarcomeric localization, CHAP was also able to translocate to the nucleus. CHAP was associated with filamentous actin in the cytoplasm and the nucleus when expressed ectopically in vitro, but in rat neonatal cardiomyocytes, CHAP disrupted the subcellular localization of alpha-actinin, another Z-disc protein. More importantly, knockdown of CHAP in zebrafish resulted in aberrant cardiac and skeletal muscle development and function. These findings suggest that CHAP is a critical component of the sarcomere with an important role in muscle development.

The contractile tissue of the heart is composed of individual cardiomyocytes. During mammalian embryonic development, heart growth is achieved by cell division while at the same time the heart is already exerting its essential pumping activity. There is still some debate whether the proliferative activity is carried out by a less differentiated, stem cell-like type of cardiomyocytes or whether embryonic cardiomyocytes are able to perform both of these completely different dynamic tasks, contraction and cell division. Our analysis of triple-stained specimen of cultured embryonic cardiomyocytes and of whole mount preparations of embryonic mouse hearts by confocal microscopy revealed that differentiated cardiomyocytes are indeed able to proliferate. However, to go through cell division, a disassembly of the contractile elements, the myofibrils, has to take place. This disassembly occurs in two steps with Z-disk and thin (actin)-filament-associated proteins getting disassembled before disassembly of the M-bands and the thick (myosin) filaments happens. After cytokinesis reassembly of the myofibrillar proteins to their mature cross-striated pattern can be seen. Another interesting observation was that the cell-cell contacts remain seemingly intact during division, probably reflecting the requirement of intact integration sites of the individual cells in the contractile tissue. Our results suggest that embryonic cardiomyocytes have developed an interesting strategy to deal with their major cytoskeletal elements, the myofibrils, during mitosis. The complex disassembly-reassembly process might also provide a mechanistic explanation, why cardiomyocytes cede to divide postnatally.

During sarcomere contraction skeletal and cardiac muscle cells consume large amounts of energy. To satisfy this demand, metabolic enzymes are associated with distinct regions of the sarcomeres in the I-band and in the M-band, where they help to maintain high local concentrations of ATP. To date, the mechanism by which metabolic enzymes are coupled to the sarcomere has not been elucidated. Here, we show that the four and a half LIM-only protein DRAL/FHL-2 mediates targeting of the metabolic enzymes creatine kinase, adenylate kinase and phosphofructokinase by interaction with the elastic filament protein titin in cardiomyocytes. Using yeast two-hybrid assays, colocalisation experiments, co-immunoprecipitation and protein pull-down assays, we show that DRAL/FHL-2 is bound to two distinct sites on titin. One binding site is situated in the N2B region, a cardiac-specific insertion in the I-band part of titin, and the other is located in the is2 region of M-band titin. We also show that DRAL/FHL-2 binds to the metabolic enzymes creatine kinase, adenylate kinase and phosphofructokinase and might target these enzymes to the N2B and is2 regions in titin. We propose that DRAL/FHL-2 acts as a specific adaptor protein to couple metabolic enzymes to sites of high energy consumption in the cardiac sarcomere.