Right and Left Ventricular Response to Oxidative Stress Following Cardiac Deletion of MnSOD

The mammalian heart consists of two ventricles (the right ventricle; RV, and left ventricle; LV) that coordinately pump oxygenated blood to the periphery. Current dogma assumes that the RV is simply a smaller version of the LV, despite growing evidence from our group and others that many physiological and molecular differences differentiate the two ventricles. One such difference is their ability to handle oxidants. The LV has higher expression of mitochondrial antioxidant enzyme manganese superoxide dismutase (MnSOD) compared to the RV and when administered an oxidant, the RV undergoes exacerbated remodeling with worse damage than the LV. To better understand how the RV and LV respond to oxidative stress, we generated a novel mouse with inducible cardiac specific deletion of MnSOD. We found robust downregulation of MnSOD expression in both ventricles. Ongoing experiments will quantify differences in oxidative damage to cellular macromolecules as well as other compensatory antioxidant enzyme expression. Given the importance of oxidative stress in a multitude of cardiac diseases, understanding how each ventricle differentially responds to oxidative stress is significant. NHI R56HL164328, McNair Scholars Program This abstract was presented at the American Physiology Summit 2025 and is only available in HTML format. There is no downloadable file or PDF version. The Physiology editorial board was not involved in the peer review process.