Disabled-2: a positive regulator of the early differentiation of myoblasts

Dab2 is an adaptor protein and a tumor suppressor. Our previous study has found that Dab2 was expressed in early differentiating skeletal muscles in mouse embryos. In this study, we determined the role of Dab2 in the skeletal muscle differentiation using C2C12 myoblasts in vitro and Xenopus laevis embryos in vivo. The expression of Dab2 was increased in C2C12 myoblasts during the formation of myotubes in vitro. Knockdown of Dab2 expression in C2C12 myoblasts resulted in a reduction of myotube formation, whereas the myotube formation was enhanced upon overexpression of Dab2. Re-expression of Dab2 in C2C12 myoblasts with downregulated expression of Dab2 restored their capacity to form myotubes. Microarray profiling and subsequent network analyses on the 155 differentially expressed genes after Dab2 knockdown showed that Mef2c was an important myogenic transcription factor regulated by Dab2 through the p38 MAPK pathway. It was also involved in other pathways that are associated with muscular development and functions. In Xenopus embryos developed in vivo, XDab2 was expressed in the myotome of somites where various myogenic markers were also expressed. Knockdown of XDab2 expression with antisense morpholinos downregulated the expression of myogenic markers in somites. In conclusion, this study is the first to provide solid evidence to show that Dab2 is a positive regulator of the early myoblast differentiation.