Of mice and spacemen: Understanding muscle wasting at the molecular level
Researchers from the University of Tsukuba have sent mice into space to explore effects of spaceflight and reduced gravity on muscle atrophy, or wasting at the molecular level.
2021-05-11
(Press-News.org) Most of us have imagined how free it would feel to float around, like an astronaut, in conditions of reduced gravity. But have you ever considered what the effects of reduced gravity might have on muscles? Gravity is a constant force on Earth which all living creatures have evolved to rely on and adapt to. Space exploration has brought about many scientific and technological advances, yet manned spaceflights come at a cost to astronauts, including reduced skeletal muscle mass and strength.
Conventional studies investigating the effects of reduced gravity on muscle mass and function have used a ground control group that is not directly comparable to the space experimental group. Researchers from the University of Tsukuba set out to explore the effects of gravity in mice subjected to the same housing conditions, including those experienced during launch and landing. "In humans, spaceflight causes muscle atrophy and can lead to serious medical problems after return to Earth" says senior author Professor Satoru Takahashi. "This study was designed based on the critical need to understand the molecular mechanisms through which muscle atrophy occurs in conditions of microgravity and artificial gravity."
Two groups of mice (six per group) were housed onboard the International Space Station for 35 days. One group was subjected to artificial gravity (1 g) and the other to microgravity. All mice were alive upon return to Earth and the team compared the effects of the different onboard environments on skeletal muscles. "To understand what was happening inside the muscles and cells, at the molecular level, we examined the muscle fibers. Our results show that artificial gravity prevents the changes observed in mice subjected to microgravity, including muscle atrophy and changes in gene expression," explained Prof. Takahashi. Transcriptional analysis of gene expression revealed that artificial gravity prevented altered expression of atrophy related genes and identified novel candidate genes associated with atrophy. Specifically, a gene called Cacng1 was identified as possibly having a functional role in myotube atrophy.
This work supports the use of spaceflight datasets using 1 g artificial gravity for examining the effects of spaceflight in muscles. These studies will likely aid our understanding of the mechanisms of muscle atrophy and may ultimately influence the treatment of related diseases.
INFORMATION:
The article, "Transcriptome analysis of gravitational effects on mouse skeletal muscles under microgravity and artificial 1 g onboard environment," was published in Scientific Reports at DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-88392-4
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-05-11
Duluth, Minnesota - A new paper in the May issue of Nature Communications demonstrates why keeping local lakes and other waterbodies clean produces cost-effective benefits locally and globally.
A single season of a lake or water body with a harmful algal bloom that results in public do-not-drink orders, damages to fishing activity, lost recreational opportunities, decreased property values and increased likelihood of low birth weight among infants born to mothers exposed to polluted water bodies are but just a handful of reasons why clean water is important.
Most everyone wants their local lake or stream to be clean and useable for drinking, fishing, swimming and recreation. But previous cost-benefit studies showed the costs ...
2021-05-11
LUND, Sweden--May 11, 2021--PolarCool AB (publ), a Swedish medical device company focusing on treatment of sports-related traumatic brain injury (TBI) and whiplash, today announced that it has submitted a 510(k) pre-market notification to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the PolarCap® System.
This submission follows publication of statistically significant clinical results in the scientific journal Concussion, showing clear benefit for use of the PolarCap® System in the treatment of concussions among players of 15 elite Swedish Ice-Hockey teams in the Swedish Hockey Leagues (SHL).
The incidence of sports-related concussions is a significant national health ...
2021-05-11
Pregnant women who are hospitalized with COVID-19 and viral pneumonia are less likely than non-pregnant women to die from these infections, according to a new study by researchers with The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) and the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM).
The study was published today in Annals of Internal Medicine.
The study examined medical records from nearly 1,100 pregnant patients and more than 9,800 non-pregnant women ages 15 to 45 who were hospitalized with COVID-19 and pneumonia. Less than 1% of the pregnant patients died from COVID-19 compared to 3.5% of non-pregnant patients, according to the study findings.
Currently, the Centers ...
2021-05-11
Lichen communities may take decades -- and in some cases up to a century -- to fully return to chaparral ecosystems after wildfire, finds a study from the University of California, Davis, and Stanford University.
The study, published today in the journal Diversity and Distributions, is the most comprehensive to date of long-term lichen recolonization after fire.
Unlike conifer forests, chaparral systems in California are historically adapted to high-intensity fires -- they burn hot, fast and tend to regenerate quickly. However, with more frequent fires predicted under a drier, warming climate ...
2021-05-11
In order for metal nanomaterials to deliver on their promise to energy and electronics, they need to shape up -- literally.
To deliver reliable mechanical and electric properties, nanomaterials must have consistent, predictable shapes and surfaces, as well as scalable production techniques. UC Riverside engineers are solving this problem by vaporizing metals within a magnetic field to direct the reassembly of metal atoms into predictable shapes. The research is published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters.
Nanomaterials, which are made of particles measuring 1-100 nanometers, are typically ...
2021-05-11
Almost half (47.5%) of women with babies aged six months or younger met the threshold for postnatal depression during the first COVID-19 lockdown, more than double average rates for Europe before the pandemic (23%), finds a new study led by UCL researchers.
Women described feelings of isolation, exhaustion, worry, inadequacy, guilt, and increased stress. Many grieved for what they felt were lost opportunities for them and their baby, and worried about the developmental impact of social isolation on their new little one.
Those whose partners were unable or unavailable to help with parenting and domestic ...
2021-05-11
Air quality in Spain temporarily improved during the first wave of COVID-19, largely as a result of mobility restrictions. Until recently, however, the effect of this improvement on the health of the population was poorly understood. A new study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by the "la Caixa" Foundation, together with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS), has estimated that this improvement in air quality prevented around 150 premature deaths in Spain's provincial capital cities.
Several analyses have estimated the mortality reduction from improved ...
2021-05-11
The tightly defined ratios of metals in MOFs makes them ideal starting materials for novel catalyst creation.
Heating bimetallic metal organic frameworks (MOFs) until their porous structure collapses into nanoparticles can be a highly effective way to make catalysts. This novel approach to catalyst design has now been used by KAUST and Spanish researchers to make a robust catalyst that converts carbon dioxide (CO2) into carbon monoxide (CO) gas with unprecedented selectivity.
The benefit of this method pioneered at KAUST is that it can generate mixed metal catalytic nanoparticles that have proven challenging or impossible to make by conventional means.
Capturing ...
2021-05-11
Published today in Nature Communications, the team from the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity (Doherty Institute), Alfred Health and Monash University sought to understand which patients would recover quickly from influenza and which would become severely ill.
The four-year project took samples from patients hospitalised with influenza at up to five time points during their hospital stay, and 30 days after discharge. They analysed the breadth of the immune response, enabling them to describe the specific roles of several different types of immune cells, including killer and helper T cells, B cells and innate cells.
University of Melbourne Dr Oanh Nguyen, Research Fellow at the Doherty Institute, said two significant findings of the research include understanding ...
2021-05-11
A group of researchers from Osaka University developed a quadruped robot platform that can reproduce the neuromuscular dynamics of animals (Figure 1), discovering that a steady gait and experimental behaviors of walking cats emerged from the reflex circuit in walking experiments on this robot. Their research results were published in Frontiers in Neurorobotics.
It was thought that a steady gait in animals is generated by complex nerve systems in the brain and spinal marrow; however, recent research shows that a steady gait is produced by the reflex circuit alone. Scientists discovered a candidate of reflex circuit to generate the steady walking motion ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Of mice and spacemen: Understanding muscle wasting at the molecular level
Researchers from the University of Tsukuba have sent mice into space to explore effects of spaceflight and reduced gravity on muscle atrophy, or wasting at the molecular level.
