Generation of inducible mitophagy mice

Abstract Mitophagy is programmed selective autophagy of mitochondria and is important for mitochondrial quality control and cellular homeostasis. Mitochondrial dysfunction and impaired mitophagy are closely associated with various diseases, including heart failure and diabetes. To better understand the pathophysiological role of mitophagy, we generated doxycycline‐inducible mitophagy mice using a synthetic mitophagy adaptor protein consisting of an outer mitochondrial membrane targeting sequence and an engineered LIR. To evaluate the activation of mitophagy upon doxycycline treatment, we also generated mitophagy reporter mito‐QC mice in which mitochondria tandemly express mCherry and GFP, and only GFP signals are lost in acidic lysosomes subjected to mitophagy. With the ROSA26 promoter‐driven rtTA, mitophagy was observed at least in heart, liver, and skeletal muscle. We investigated the relationship between mitophagy activation and pressure overload heart failure or high fat diet‐induced obesity. Unexpectedly, we were unable to confirm the protective effect of mitophagy in these two pathological models. Further titration of the level of mitophagy induction is required to demonstrate the potency of the protective effects of mitophagy in disease models.