Abstract 20358: The mRNA Binding Protein Zfp36l1 Regulates Cardiac Development Genes and is Essential for Cardiac Function in Adulthood

Introduction: Several key transcription factors are known to orchestrate the majority of cardiac morphogenesis during embryonic development. However, the post-transcriptional regulation of these essential genes has not been well described. Zfp36L1 is a tandem zinc finger protein that binds to AU-rich elements (AREs) in the 3’ untranslated region (UTR) of mRNA transcripts and promotes their degradation. Global knock-out (KO) of Zfp36L1 in mice results in lethality at embryonic day 11 (E11). However, a subset of these mice developed additional cardiac structural abnormalities including myocardial thinning. To determine the requirement for Zfp36L1 in cardiac development, we generated cardiac specific Zfp36L1 KO mice. We hypothesize that Zfp36L1 fine-tunes the canonical gene expression programs during cardiac development, and its deletion will result in cardiomyopathy due to deficits in cardiac differentiation. Results: Unbiased gene ontology analysis of an RNA immunoprecipitation-sequencing dataset using Zfp...