Myology research highlights

Diminished regenerative capacity of skeletal muscle occurs during adulthood. Here, the authors identified a reduction in the intrinsic capacity of mouse adult satellite cells to contribute to muscle regeneration and repopulation of the niche. Gene expression analysis identified higher expression of JAK-STAT signaling targets in 3-week-old relative to 18-month-old mice. Knockdown of Jak2 or Stat3 … [Read more]

Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT) is the most common inherited neuropathy characterized by clinical and genetic heterogeneity. Although more than 30 loci harboring CMT-causing mutations have been identified, many other genes still remain to be discovered for many affected individuals. For two consanguineous families with CMT (axonal and mixed phenotypes), a parametric linkage analysis using genome-wide SNP … [Read more]

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a neurodegenerative disease caused by the loss of Survival Motor Neuron-1 (SMN1). In all SMA patients, a nearly identical copy gene called SMN2 is present, which produces low levels of functional protein owing to an alternative splicing event. To prevent exon-skipping, the authors targeted an intronic repressor, Element1 (E1), located … [Read more]

Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD) is an enigmatic disease associated with epigenetic alterations in the subtelomeric heterochromatin of the D4Z4 macrosatellite repeat. Each repeat unit encodes DUX4, a gene that is normally silent in most tissues. Besides muscular loss, most patients suffer retinal vascular telangiectasias. To generate an animal model, a doxycycline-inducible transgene encoding DUX4 and … [Read more]

Single-molecule (SM) fluorescence microscopy allows the imaging of biomolecules in cultured cells with a precision of a few nanometres but has yet to be implemented in living adult animals. Here split-GFP (green fluorescent protein) fusions and complementation-activated light microscopy (CALM) were used for subresolution imaging of individual membrane proteins in live Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans). … [Read more]

The progressive loss of muscle regenerative capacity with age or disease results in part from a decline in the number and function of satellite cells, the direct cellular contributors to muscle repair. However, little is known about the molecular effectors underlying satellite cell impairment and depletion. Elevated levels of inflammatory cytokines, including interleukin-6 (IL-6), are … [Read more]

Proteins of the nuclear envelope (NE) are associated with a range of inherited disorders, most commonly involving muscular dystrophy and cardiomyopathy, as exemplified by Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy (EDMD). EDMD is both genetically and phenotypically variable, and some evidence of modifier genes has been reported. Six genes have so far been linked to EDMD, four encoding … [Read more]

The integrity of the plasma membrane is maintained through an active repair process, especially in skeletal and cardiac muscle cells, in which contraction-induced mechanical damage frequently occurs in vivo. Muscular dystrophies (MDs) are a group of muscle diseases characterized by skeletal muscle wasting and weakness. An important cause of this group of diseases is defective … [Read more]

Myofibrillar myopathies (MFM) are a group of phenotypically and genetically heterogeneous neuromuscular disorders, which are characterized by protein aggregations in muscle fibres and can be associated with multisystemic involvement. Here, the authors screened a large cohort of 38 index patients with MFM for mutations in the nine thus far known causative genes using Sanger and … [Read more]

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a fatal, X-linked neuromuscular disease that affects 1 boy in 3500 to 5000 boys. The golden retriever muscular dystrophy dog is the best clinically relevant DMD animal model. Here, the authors used a high-thoughput miRNA sequencing screening for identification of candidate serum miRNA biomarkers in golden retriever muscular dystrophy dogs. … [Read more]