Are there proteins in striated muscle cells responding to mechanical stress?
We know that hypertrophic response occurs after birth in early phenotype mice, probably due to increased mechanical stress after birth. Because MLP-deficient hearts respond to mechanical stress with hypertrophy in early phenotype mice, mechanical stress must induce some type of gene expression taking part in the enlargement. Or, perhaps the enlargement is due to a failure of proper gene expression. An experiment needs to be done examining the protein levels of different proteins in cardiomyocytes taken from an early phenotype mouse at different stages ranging from neonatal day 1 until heart failure. This could be done by extracting proteins from the cells and running them on an SDS-PAGE with protein stain. Proteins which increase in concentration as hypertrophy progresses could then be tested further to see if they are involved with the same process as MLP. If certain other proteins are known to be involved in the structure with MLP prior to this experiment, mRNA levels could be tested
