DSG1 and cardiomyopathy: The BIO 14.6 hamster strain was established in 1962 [44] and was studied for over three decades as a model of cardiomyopathy, but it was only after the discovery of the causative mutation in LGMD2F patients that two independent laboratories demonstrated a large deletion in the 5' end of the δ-SG gene in these animals [45,46].