Its very clear that the myocytes have Cx43 but what about the fibroblasts? And if so what is its role in the heart?
Hello Krishna,
Connexin 43 is a Gap junction alpha-1 protein, involved in intercellular communication, muscle contraction, development, and is mainly expressed in CM gap junctions (Boengler K, et al. Heart. 2006;92(12):1724-1727. doi:10.1136/hrt.2005.066878.
& Eckardt D, et al. J Mol Cell Cardiol. 2006;41(6):963-971. doi:10.1016/j.yjmcc.2006.07.017.)
Also, Cx43 is the first connexin to be expressed in developing mouse CMs (Delorme B, at al. Circ Res. 1997;81(3):423-437. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9285645).
As for your question; you need first to think: what is the cardiac fibroblast and what marker you intend to use to identify it. The reported markers of the "cardiac fibroblasts" vary, are not that specific and there is not clear-cut standard one.
Rosenthal’s N. group (Furtado MB et al. Circ Res. 2014;114(9):1422-1434.doi:10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.114.302530.), used CD90+, DDR2+, periostin+ “fibroblast” population from the mouse heart, and saw “an unexpected enrichment" in cardiogenic transcription factors. So fibroblasts do express cardiac markers.
This paper also shows that murine cardiac fibroblasts can express it (Y. Zhang, et al. Cell Commun. Adhes., 15 (2008), pp. 289–303)
Best wishes,
Sophia
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