Memory of Skeletal Muscle Growth
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Does skeletal muscle have an epigenetic memory of exercise induced muscle growth?
IRAS ID
196435
Contact name
Robert Seaborne
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Liverpool John Moores University
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
After 50 years of age, humans rapidly lose skeletal muscle tissue (sarcopenia) leading to increased frailty, loss of independence and quality of life.
Our recent studies show muscle has a ‘memory’ of early life periods of muscle loss, i.e. muscle can be programmed in early life to respond differently into adulthood or older life. Where we have shown:
i) Foetal malnutrition and low birth weight is strongly linked with reduced muscle size/function into old age, suggesting that muscle has a ‘memory’ of negative early life encounters (Patel et al., 2012 PMID: 25055749).
ii) Muscle cells from cancer patients with muscle wasting have a memory of the disease environment and behave differently versus control non-malignant cells (Foulstone et al., 2003, PMID 14710345).
iii) Muscle cells remember even acute early-life encounters from inflammatory stress and react with more severe muscle wasting characteristics when they encounter these proteins in later life. Importantly, cells retain epigenetic 'tags' on their DNA via DNA methylation into later life, even after an acute early life stress suggesting that epigenetics may control the observed muscle memory phenomenon (Sharples et al., 2015 PMID: 26349924).
Other studies have eluded to muscle memory of muscle growth periods, however these studies have been limited to animal studies without the underlying controlling epigenetic mechanisms investigated.
As muscle growth and maintenance are important to promote healthy ageing. We therefore AIM to; 1) investigate how muscle growth is control by epigenetics and how these mechanisms control the turning on and off of important genes involved in human skeletal muscle growth and the regenerative capacity of their muscle derived stem cells. 2) investigate if muscle 'remembers' earlier periods of muscle growth and the underlying epigenetic and gene expression signatures that control the retention of information when humans encounter other muscle growth periods into later life.
REC name
West Midlands - Black Country Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/WM/0103
Date of REC Opinion
30 Mar 2016
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion