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B07

Control of cardiac homeostasis and cardiocrine signaling by protein arginine methyltransferases

Johannes Backs, Christoph Dieterich

Summary

Protein arginine methyltransferases are strongly down-regulated in failing human hearts. Our preliminary work unmasked that PRMT5 and PRMT7 exert strong cardiomyocyte-intrinsic effects on splicing and histone methylation along with essential functions for mitochondrial function, cardiac contractility and microenvironmental integrity. Together with other CRC 1550 projects, B07 will undertake an integrative approach to decode Prmt5-/Prmt7-dependent cardiomyocyte-intrinsic mechanisms of secretion of factors that instruct non-myocytes to induce fibrosis.

SELECTED SCIENTIFIC OUTCOMES

2024

"Transverse aortic constriction multi-omics analysis uncovers pathophysiological cardiac molecular mechanisms"

Gjerga E, Dewenter M, Britto-Borges T, Grosso J, Stein F, Eschenbach J, Rettel M, Backs J & Dieterich C.

Oxford 2024

2025

"Rationale and design of the cyclosporine in Takotsubo syndrome (CIT) trial"

Bruns B, Elsous N, Burghaus I, Steyrer K, Joos M, Kramer T, Scheffel M, Blankenberg S, Eitel I, Massberg S, Thiele H, Meder B, Backs J & Frey N.

Am Heart J. 289:147-57, 2025

2023

"Calcineurin signaling promotes tako-tsubo syndrome"

Bruns B, Antoniou M, Baier I, Joos M, Sevinchan M, Moog MC, Dieterich C, Friederich HC, Khan H, Wilson H, Herzog W, Dawson DK, Frey N, Schultz JH & Backs J.

Nat Cardiovasc Res. 2:645-55, 2023

2023

"Characterizing alternative splicing effects on protein interaction networks with LINDA"

Gjerga E, Naarmann-de Vries IS & Dieterich C.

Bioinformatics. 39:i458-i64, 2023

2025

"Genomic G quadruplexes regulate mRNA splicing"

Mauz V, Britto-Borges T, Merkel T, Gjerga E, Hartmann J, Snaebjörnsson MT, Schreiter F, Oeing CU, Sticht C, Sossalla S, Okun JG, Stoecklin G, Hentze MW, Furlong EEM, Schulze A, Dewenter M, Dieterich C & Backs J.

bioRxiv. 2025.12.15.693900, 2025

2023

"Striated muscle-specific base editing enables correction of mutations causing dilated cardiomyopathy"

Grosch M, Schraft L, Chan A, Kuchenhoff L, Rapti K, Ferreira AM, Kornienko J, Li S, Radke MH, Kramer C, Clauder-Munster S, Perlas E, Backs J, Gotthardt M, Dieterich C, van den Hoogenhof MMG, Grimm D & Steinmetz LM

Nat Commun. 14:3714, 2023.

2022

"Deep phenotyping of two preclinical mouse models and a cohort of RBM20 mutation carriers reveals no sex-dependent disease severity in RBM20 cardiomyopathy"

Lennermann DC, Pepin ME, Grosch M, Konrad L, Kemmling E, Hartmann J, Nolte JL, Clauder-Munster S, Kayvanpour E, Sedaghat-Hamedani F, Haas J, Meder B, van den Boogaard M, Amin AS, Dewenter M, Kruger M, Steinmetz LM, Backs J & van den Hoogenhof MMG

Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol. 323:H1296-H310, 2022.

2024

"In Vivo Silencing of Regulatory Elements Using a Single AAV-CRISPRi Vector"

Laurette P, Cao C, Ramanujam D, Schwaderer M, Lueneburg T, Kuss S, Weiss L, Dilshat R, Furlong EEM, Rezende F, Engelhardt S & Gilsbach R.

Circ Res. 134:223-5, 2024.

involved in the project

© UKHD
Prof. Dr. rer. nat.

Christoph Dieterich

B07
INF
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© UKHD
Prof. Dr.

Johannes Backs

A01
B07
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Other scientific staff involved in the project

Enio Gjerga
Victoria Mauz
Theresa Kirschbaum
Sricharan Lakkaraju
Farhad Bazgir

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