Roles of SUMOylation in Heart Development and Cardiovascular Diseases

Heart is an extremely important organ, and cardiovascular disorders emerge as primary life-threatening disease in human life. Aberrant post-translational modifications (PTMs) on cardiac proteins are closely correlated with pathological abnormalities in heart. SUMOylation, one of the most prevalent PTMs with thousands of substrates throughout the cell including critical subcellular organelles, has been shown to precisely finetune the cell survival and proliferation during heart development, and delicately control the function of mitochondrion and sarcoplasmic reticulum in physiological heart functioning. The silver lining is pathologically cardiacspecific SUMOylation being considered as target for cardiovascular disease intervention and treatment. Here, we summarize the recent progress in heart-specific functions of the SUMOylation pathway. In particular, we discuss the biological significance of SUMO conjugation/deconjugation during heart development, and in physiological cardiovascular health involving cardiac mitochondrial function, cardiac contractility, stress adaption and protein homeostasis. We also discuss the crosstalks between sumoylation and other post-translational modifications such as acetylation and ubiquitination. These crosstalks not only shed light to our understanding of the regulatory mechanisms on cardiovascular disorders but also contributes to their future therapy.