Reprogramming Muscles to Combat Degeneration

The researchers at the University of California-Berkeley have reversed the clock on mature muscle tissue by coaxing it back to an earlier stem cell stage to form new muscle, in which could help repair damaged tissue.

Formation of skeletal muscles proceeds as: stem cells --> myoblasts (individual muscle cells that have fused together) --> muscle fiber.

However, the researchers were able to get a multi-nucleated muscle fiber to reverse its course and become myoblasts by exposing the differentiated muscle tissue to tyrosine phosphatase inhibitors, which allow the mature cells to start dividing again.

However, exposing the fibers to this inhibitor is a huge change and signalling them to divide will cause many of them to die. To combat the problem, the researchers are also using an inhibitor of apoptosis, which essentially brainwash the cell to go into the cell cycle and divide without allowing them to die in the process as well.

To test the viability of the newly regenerated myoblasts, the researchers injected them into live mice with damaged muscles. After several weeks, new muscle fibers were forming in the damaged muscles of the mice.

**I found this article interesting in the fact that it could be easily tied into our SNBAL discussions dealing with apoptosis and stem cell research, and that this discovery is very promising. The ability to be able to regenerate muscle fibers in patients with degenerative muscle diseases will open many doors into research in which various organs will be able to be regenerated through this process.

To read the full press release:

http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/reprogrammed-muscles-repair-damage/