DES and cardiomyopathy: Desmin is part of a large multigene family of IF cytoskeletal proteins responsible for the mechanical and stress-coping resilience of cells (Guo et al. 2013) and no more so than in muscle (Palmisano et al. 2014) where the targeted deletion of desmin from the mouse genome causes cardiomyopathy, fibrosis and heart failure (Milner et al. 1996).