Comparative proteomics reveals that fatty acid metabolism is involved in myocardial adaptation to chronic hypoxic injury.

Congenital heart disease (CHD) is the most serious form of heart disease, and chronic hypoxia is the basic physiological process underlying CHD. Some patients with CHD do not undergo surgery, and thus, they remain susceptible to chronic hypoxia, suggesting that some protective mechanism might exist in CHD patients. However, the mechanism underlying myocardial adaptation to chronic hypoxia remains unclear. Proteomics was used to identify the differentially expressed proteins in cardiomyocytes cultured under hypoxia for different durations. Western blotting assays were used to verify protein expression. A Real-Time Cell Analyzer (RTCA) was used to analyze cell growth. In this study, 3881 proteins were identified by proteomics. Subsequent bioinformatics analysis revealed that proteins were enriched in regulating oxidoreductase activity. Functional similarity cluster analyses showed that chronic hypoxia resulted in proteins enrichment in the mitochondrial metabolic pathway. Further KEGG analyses found that the proteins involved in fatty acid metabolism, the TCA cycle and oxidative phosphorylation were markedly upregulated. Moreover, knockdown of CPT1A or ECI1, which is critical for fatty acid degradation, suppressed the growth of cardiomyocytes under chronic hypoxia. The results of our study revealed that chronic hypoxia activates fatty acid metabolism to maintain the growth of cardiomyocytes.