On gene expression patterns in mammalian hibernation

✍ Scribed by Katharine M. Brauch

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 23 KB
• Volume: 30
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0265-9247
• DOI: 10.1002/bies.20810

✦ Synopsis

Sir, I would like to bring to the attention of your readership a misleading statement in the review article, ''Advances in molecular biology of hibernation in mammals''. (1) I performed the majority of the experimental work involved in the expressed sequence tag (EST) study ''Digital transcriptome analysis indicates adaptive mechanisms in the heart of a hibernating mammal'' (2) cited in Dr. Andrews' review.

Page 436, subheading ''Ca 2þ handling in the cold'' of Dr. Andrews' review misstates that calcium/calmodulindependent protein kinase II d (CAMK2D) and a positive regulator of the kinase, calmodulin (CaM), are expressed at high levels in the heart prior to hibernation. (1) Based on the design of the study Andrews cites in conjunction with this statement, this quantitative assessment simply cannot be concluded. The cited ESTscreen that I performed is limited as a relative quantification assay, in that levels of gene expression can only be described as ''higher'' or ''lower'' than another phenotype, in this case, summer active animals. It is only accurate to say that CAMK2D and CaM are expressed at higher levels in the heart during the summer active state compared to expression levels during hibernation, as the summer active animal serves as the baseline or normal phenotype used for comparison in the study. These results are published in their entirety in the aforementioned EST profiling article. (2)