Selective titin cleavage disrupts cardiac mechanical homeostasis to drive heart failure and fibrosis
Johanna K. Freundt, Paulina Hartmann, Christine M. Loescher, Andreas Unger, Franziska Koser, Annika J. Klotz, Lena Wildschütz, Lydia Wachsmuth, Susanne Hille, Michaela M. Door, Anne Helfen, Richard Holtmeier, Cornelius Faber, Jonathan A. Kirk, Verena Hoerr, Oliver J. Müller, Wolfgang A. Linke · 2026
Read Selective titin cleavage disrupts cardiac mechanical homeostasis to drive heart failure and fibrosis by Johanna K. Freundt, Paulina Hartmann, Christine M. Loescher, Andreas Unger, Franziska Koser, Annika J. Klotz, Lena Wildschütz, Lydia Wachsmuth, Susanne Hille, Michaela M. Door, Anne Helfen, Richard Holtmeier, Cornelius Faber, Jonathan A. Kirk, Verena Hoerr, Oliver J. Müller, Wolfgang A. Linke (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13271893.txt.
Description
Johanna K. Freundt is lead author of a 2026 journal article on titin, the largest human protein, which forms the elastic backbone of heart muscle cells and gives the heart its passive stiffness. Titin mutations cause inherited heart disease, and injury can also cut titin's elastic segment, but the effect of suddenly losing that spring was unknown.
The team engineered mice whose cardiac titin could be cut on demand. Cutting did not stretch the heart open; instead chambers shrank and filling worsened. Isolated cells lost elastic recoil, cell junctions broke down, gaps between cells widened, and scar-forming cells activated, driving fibrosis, stiffening of heart tissue. Compensation failed and heart failure followed, showing the spring is essential to mechanical balance.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Johanna K. Freundt, Paulina Hartmann, Christine M. Loescher, Andreas Unger, Franziska Koser, Annika J. Klotz, Lena Wildschütz, Lydia Wachsmuth, Susanne Hille, Michaela M. Door, Anne Helfen, Richard Holtmeier, Cornelius Faber, Jonathan A. Kirk, Verena Hoerr, Oliver J. Müller, Wolfgang A. Linke |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 85953 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |