Paracrine Secretion of Cardiac‐Derived Erythropoietin is Required for Cardiogenesis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Erythropoietin (EPO) is widely recognized as the principle regulator of erythropoiesis, however, extra‐erythropoietic functions have been identified including cytoprotection, cardiac inotropy, cellular proliferation, and embryonic development. Whole body deletion of either EPO or the EPO receptor is embryonic lethal with impaired cardiogenesis leading to ventricular hypoplasia. While multiple extra‐renal tissue and cell types produce EPO, whether the heart is a direct source remains unclear. Human recombinant EPO increases myocardial contractility and confers cytoprotection against cardiac injury, which suggests a role for EPO signalling in the heart. Our objectives were to (1) confirm whether the heart produces EPO and (2) determine if there is a role for paracrine EPO signalling during cardiogenesis. We generated constitutive, cardiomyocyte‐specific EPO knockout mice driven by the Mlc2v promoter (EPO fl/fl :Mlc2v‐cre +/− ; EPO Δ/Δ‐CM ). We confirmed that the heart is a source of EPO expression with a distinct circadian rhythm in adult hearts and increased expression during embryonic development. During cardiogenesis, cardiac EPO expression was reduced, but not eliminated, in EPO Δ/Δ‐CM hearts with decreased cardiac cell proliferation. This suggests EPO signalling is partially compensated by an alternate cardiac cell type during cardiac development. In adult EPO Δ/Δ‐CM mice, global cardiac mass was preserved while cardiomyocyte cross‐sectional area was increased. Taken together, cellular cardiomyocyte hypertrophy in the absence of gross organ hypertrophy, and the observed reduction in cardiac cell proliferation during cardiogenesis, points towards a reduction in the overall number of cardiomyocytes in EPO Δ/Δ‐CM mice. Collectively, these data identify the first physiological roles of extra‐renal EPO by confirming that the heart is a source of EPO and that paracrine expression is required for cardiogenesis. Further, cardiac EPO expression is a complex interplay of multiple cell types where loss of cardiomyocyte production results in compensation from other cardiac cell lineages. Support or Funding Information This work was funded in part by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (JAS), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (KRB, MKV, and JAS), the Canadian Glycomics Network (JAS), and the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada (KRB and JAS). JAS is also a new investigator with the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".