Hypertension is the most common chronic medical condition worldwide and in the US alone 72 million people are affected with the condition. Of these, 90% developed hypertension for no known reasons, also called as Essential hypertension. Although it is well known that genetics play a major role in conferring susceptibility to develop essential hypertension, the identities of the genes/genetic factors that are causally responsible for essential hypertension remain largely unknown. This is the single biggest rate-limiting factor in advancing our understanding of the etiology of essential hypertension. Using a rat genetic model for hypertension, we have located a 793.5 kb region on the rat genome as responsible for controlling BP. This region in rats and the orthologous regions in humans, contains two genes, only one of which contains significant variations. Analysis of single nucleotide polymorphisms in humans indicates that select variants of this gene are also associated with human essential hypertension. This observation defines the need to further investigate the function of this novel gene, which constitutes one of the specific aims of our proposal. The other aims are to further genetically dissect the critical 793.5kb region to obtain further evidence for the candidacy of this prioritized candidate gene and/or other QTL effectors by trapping the BP effect within the shortest possible rat genomic segment and to construct a transgenic-congenic strain to test the QTL effect. The significance of our proposal is that it is potentially on the verge of unraveling a novel genetic factor in the etiology of Essential Hypertension.

Public Health Relevance

Genetics is well recognized to be an important factor that contributes to the development of hypertension, which leads to cardiovascular related illnesses. The research work described in this proposal pertains to improve our current, significantly limited understanding of the identities of genes that control blood pressure. Knowledge gained through successful completion of the work described is expected to pin-point at least one genetic factor that has not been previously suspected to cause hypertension.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01HL076709-04
Application #
8116553
Study Section
Hypertension and Microcirculation Study Section (HM)
Program Officer
OH, Youngsuk
Project Start
2008-08-01
Project End
2012-07-31
Budget Start
2011-08-01
Budget End
2012-07-31
Support Year
4
Fiscal Year
2011
Total Cost
$324,878
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Toledo
Department
Physiology
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
807418939
City
Toledo
State
OH
Country
United States
Zip Code
43614
Haller, Steven T; Kumarasamy, Sivarajan; Folt, David A et al. (2017) Targeted disruption of Cd40 in a genetically hypertensive rat model attenuates renal fibrosis and proteinuria, independent of blood pressure. Kidney Int 91:365-374
Kumarasamy, Sivarajan; Solanki, Sumeet; Atolagbe, Oluwatomisin T et al. (2017) Deep Transcriptomic Profiling of M1 Macrophages Lacking Trpc3. Sci Rep 7:39867
Nie, Ying; Kumarasamy, Sivarajan; Waghulde, Harshal et al. (2016) High-resolution mapping of a novel rat blood pressure locus on chromosome 9 to a region containing the Spp2 gene and colocalization of a QTL for bone mass. Physiol Genomics 48:409-19
Gopalakrishnan, Kathirvel; Kumarasamy, Sivarajan; Mell, Blair et al. (2015) Genome-wide identification of long noncoding RNAs in rat models of cardiovascular and renal disease. Hypertension 65:200-10
Kumarasamy, Sivarajan; Waghulde, Harshal; Gopalakrishnan, Kathirvel et al. (2015) Mutation within the hinge region of the transcription factor Nr2f2 attenuates salt-sensitive hypertension. Nat Commun 6:6252
Joe, Bina (2015) Dr Lewis Kitchener Dahl, the Dahl rats, and the ""inconvenient truth"" about the genetics of hypertension. Hypertension 65:963-9
Mell, Blair; Jala, Venkatakrishna R; Mathew, Anna V et al. (2015) Evidence for a link between gut microbiota and hypertension in the Dahl rat. Physiol Genomics 47:187-97
Kumarasamy, Sivarajan; Gopalakrishnan, Kathirvel; Abdul-Majeed, Shakila et al. (2013) Construction of two novel reciprocal conplastic rat strains and characterization of cardiac mitochondria. Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol 304:H22-32
Pillai, Resmi; Waghulde, Harshal; Nie, Ying et al. (2013) Isolation and high-throughput sequencing of two closely linked epistatic hypertension susceptibility loci with a panel of bicongenic strains. Physiol Genomics 45:729-36
Gopalakrishnan, Kathirvel; Kumarasamy, Sivarajan; Yan, Yanling et al. (2012) Increased Expression of Rififylin in A? Front Genet 3:138

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