It is important to note that although the acute ablation of Mfn1 and Mfn2 appeared to be protective against acute I/R injury, the long-term effects of ablating these proteins would not be beneficial and has been shown to result in a cardiomyopathy and sudden cardiac death.37 Therefore, we would propose transient inhibition of the Mitofusins during acute I/R injury to be a novel strategy for cardioprotection. The gene discussed is MFN2; the disease is cardiomyopathy.