Temporal gene expression profiling of dystrophin-deficient (mdx) mouse diaphragm identifies conserved and muscle group-specific mechanisms in the pathogenesis of muscular dystrophy

Mutations in dystrophin are the proximate cause of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), but pathogenic mechanisms linking the absence of dystrophin from the sarcolemma to myofiber necrosis are not fully known. The muscular dystrophies also have properties not accounted for by current disease models, including the temporal delay to disease onset, broad species differences in severity, and diversity of skeletal muscle responses. To address the mechanisms underlying the differential targeting of muscular dystrophy, we characterized temporal expression profiles of the diaphragm in dystrophin-deficient (mdx) mice between postnatal days 7 and 112 using oligonucleotide microarrays and contrasted these data with published hindlimb muscle data. Although the diaphragm and hindlimb muscle groups differ in severity of response to dystrophin deficiency, and exhibited substantial divergence in some transcript categories including inflammation and muscle-specific genes, our data show that the general mechanisms operative in muscular dystrophy are highly conserved. The two muscle groups principally differed in expression levels of differentially regulated genes, as opposed to the non-conserved induced/repressed transcripts defining fundamentally distinct mechanisms. We also identified a postnatal divergence of the two wild-type muscle group expression profiles that temporally correlated with the onset and progression of the dystrophic process. These findings support the hypothesis that conserved disease mechanisms interacting with baseline differences in muscle group-specific transcriptomes underlie their differential responses to DMD. We further suggest that muscle group-specific transcriptional profiles contribute toward the muscle targeting and sparing patterns observed for a variety of metabolic and neuromuscular diseases.