17β-estradiol delays cardiac aging through suppressing the methylation of Beclin1 in a murine model

Abstract

Abstract Cardiac endogenous senescence will gradually change and aggravate with age. Recent research showed that 17β-estradiol (17β-E2), an estrogen with numerous biological activities including the prevention of vascular senescence. However, how 17β-E2 against cardiac aging is still unknown. This work addressed the underlying mechanism with regard to Beclin1 and autophagy activity to better understand the anti-senescent effect of 17β-E2 on a well-established animal model of cardiac aging. The findings demonstrated that cardiac aging mice treated with 17β-E2 had substantially improved heart function. By RNA-sequencing and Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) analysis, the autophagy signaling pathway was further enriched in the myocardial tissue of cardiac aging mice treated with 17β-E2, and we also discovered that 17β-E2 obviously suppress the methylation of Beclin1 promoter region, which mediate the activation of autophagy signal. Overall, our data showed that 17β-E2's anti-senescent effect on cardiac aging mice was mediated by the crucial suppression of methylation in the Beclin1 promoter area and subsequent activation of the autophagy signal, which may present a possible therapeutic approach to prevent cardiac aging.