The Effect of Cardiolipin on Vascular Smooth Muscle Cell \nDedifferentiation, Function, and Mitochondrial Respiration
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The initial phases of atherosclerosis involve the transition of normal vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) to a synthetic, dedifferentiated phenotype, which can migrate and proliferate. This could potentially obstruct blood flow, which, when destined to the cardiomyocytes, can lead to myocardial infarction. Studies have demonstrated that cardiomyocytes, undergoing apoptosis, release a phospholipid molecule called cardiolipin (CL) into the systemic circulation. The objective of this project was to investigate the impact of cardiolipin on VSMCs, specifically addressing cellular dedifferentiation, migration, proliferation, and whether these modifications are mitochondria-mediated. The effect of CL on aortic contractility was also examined. Using adult mice aortas, we quantified a number of differentiation and dedifferentiation markers (αsmooth actin, calponin1, calpain I, and MMP14), following 48 hours of organ culture with physiological concentrations of CL (1µM and 10 µM) through immunoblotting. These CL concentrations were also used to investigate VSMC migration and proliferation over six days using cell culture, and to study blood vessel contraction following 48 hours of organ culture. Additionally, the acute effects of cardiolipin on VSMC mitochondria were examined through the use of high-resolution respirometry and selected substrate-inhibitor-uncoupler titration protocols. We found that calponin1 protein expression has significantly decreased by CL, while the other proteins remained unaffected. VSMC migration was ceased when treated with CL, while proliferation and contraction seemed unaffected. Mitochondrial respiration was significantly decreased for complex I and III. In conclusion, our results demonstrate that CL significantly reduces VSMC migration, calponin levels, and mitochondrial respiration, which could potentially act as an anti-atherosclerotic factor.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 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 | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
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 teacher head, 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".