The cardiac METTL3/m6A pathway regulates the systemic response to Western diet.

Abstract

Regulation of organismal homeostasis in response to nutrient availability is a vital physiological process that involves interorgan communication. The role of the heart in controlling systemic metabolic health is not clear. Adopting a mouse model of diet-induced obesity, we found that the landscape of N6-methyladenosine (m6A) on cardiac mRNA was altered following high-fat/high-carbohydrate feeding (Western diet). m6A is a critical posttranscriptional regulator of gene expression, the formation of which is catalyzed by methyltransferase-like 3 (METTL3). Through parallel unbiased approaches of Nanopore sequencing, mass spectrometry, and protein array, we found regulation of circulating factors under the control of METTL3. Mice with cardiomyocyte-specific deletion of METTL3 showed a systemic inability to respond to nutritional challenge, thereby mitigating the detrimental effects of Western diet. Conversely, increasing cardiac METTL3 level exacerbated diet-induced body weight gain, adiposity, and glucose intolerance. Our findings position the heart at the center of systemic metabolism regulation and highlight an m6A-dependent pathway to be exploited for the battle against obesity.