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Ahlke Heydemann, Elizabeth McNally
Published in Volume 119, Issue 3
J Clin Invest. 2009; 119(3):448–450 doi:10.1172/JCI38618
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Figure 1
Mechanism for the localization of nNOS to the plasma membrane of muscle.

Sarcolemmal nNOS promotes vasodilation and improves blood flow into muscle. This blood flow is necessary to prevent early fatigue with exercise. In this issue of the JCI, Lai et al. show that a direct interaction between dystrophin and nNOS is mediated by spectrin-like repeats 16 and 17 in dystrophin (SR16/17) (14). It was previously shown that α-syntrophin could directly bind nNOS by way of its PDZ domain (15). Loss of dystrophin in humans with DMD or in mdx mice is associated with reduction in levels of dystrophin-associated proteins including α-syntrophin and nNOS (2). Work by Lai et al. (14) as well as recent reports by Kobayashi et al. (16) and Percival et al. (8) now clarify that loss of nNOS from the plasma membrane mediates muscle fatigue after minimal exercise and that this feature is present in diverse forms of muscle disease.