Physiologic Growth and Pathologic Genes in Cardiac Development and Cardiomyopathy

The influence of genetics in acquired adult heart disease remains incompletely defined. Genetic manipulation in mice has been widely used in combination with physiologic modeling to address this deficiency and has provided insights into the pathophysiology of myocardial signaling. However, conventional techniques of directed gene expression or ablation confound adult heart phenotypes with genetic perturbation of embryonic or postnatal cardiac development. Here, studies of Gαq and Nix, powerful signaling factors for pathologic hypertrophy and cardiomyocyte apoptosis, respectively, are reviewed in terms of their comparative effects on cardiac development and adult cardiac pathology.