PHD3 mediates denervation skeletal muscle atrophy through Nf‐κB signal pathway

Abstract Skeletal muscle is the largest organ of the body, the development of skeletal muscle is very important for the health of the animal body. Prolyl hydroxylases (PHDs) are the classical regulator of the hypoxia inducible factor (HIF) signal pathway, many researchers found that PHDs are involved in the muscle fiber type transformation, muscle regeneration, and myocyte differentiation. However, whether PHDs can impact the protein turnover of skeletal muscle is poorly understood. In this study, we constructed denervated muscle atrophy mouse model and found PHD3 was highly expressed in the atrophic muscles and there was a significant correlation between the expression level of PHD3 and skeletal muscle weight which was distinct from PHD1 and PHD2. Then, the similar results were getting from the different weight muscles of normal mice. To further verify the relationship between PHD3 and skeletal muscle protein turnover, we established a PHD3 interference model by injecting PHD3 sgRNA virus into tibialis anterior muscle (TA) muscle of MCK‐Cre‐cas9 mice and transfecting PHD3 shRNA lentivirus into primary satellite cells. It was found that the Knock‐out of PHD3 in vivo led to a significant increase in muscle weight and muscle fiber area ( P < .05). Besides, the activity of protein synthesis signal pathway increased significantly, while the protein degradation pathway was inhibited evidently ( P < .05). In vitro, the results of 5‐ethynyl‐2′‐deoxyuridine (EdU) and tetramethylrhodamine ethyl ester (TMRE) fluorescence detection showed that PHD3 interference could lead to a decrease in cell proliferation and an increase of cell apoptosis. After the differentiation of satellite cells, the production of puromycin in the interference group was higher than that in the control group, and the content of 3‐methylhistidine in the interference group was lower than that in the control group ( P < .05) which is consistent with the change of protein turnover signal pathway in the cell. Mechanistically, there is an interaction between PHD3, NF‐κB, and IKBα which was detected by immunoprecipitation. With the interfering of PHD3, the expression of the inflammatory signal pathway also significantly decreased ( P < .05). These results suggest that PHD3 may affect protein turnover in muscle tissue by mediating inflammatory signal pathway. Finally, we knocked out PHD3 in denervated muscle atrophy mice and LPS‐induced myotubes atrophy model. Then, we found that the decrease of PHD3 protein level could alleviate the muscle weight and muscle fiber reduction induced by denervation in mice. Meanwhile, the protein level of the inflammatory signal pathway and the content of 3‐methylhistidine in denervated atrophic muscle were also significantly reduced ( P < .05). In vitro, PHD3 knock‐out could alleviate the decrease of myotube diameter induced by LPS, and the expression of protein synthesis pathway was also significantly increased ( P < .05). On the contrary, the expression level of protein degradation and inflammatory signal pathway was significantly decreased ( P < .05). Through these series of studies, we found that the increased expression of PHD3 in denervated muscle might be an important regulator in inducing muscle atrophy, and this process is likely to be mediated by the inflammatory NF‐κB signal pathway.