A systems biology approach to studying skeletal muscle ageing

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Ageing is associated with loss of muscle strength and endurance (muscle quality) which severely impairs mobility of people in everyday life. Our understanding of what determines muscle quality in humans, and how this is altered as we age is not sufficient to design specific interventions that may substantially protect people from loss of function. These interventions could be specialised clinical physiotherapy which includes devices that enhance the process of exercise and they could involve new drug therapies that promote improved muscle function or accelerate the gains made with physiotherapy by accelerating the biological effects of exercise.The starting point for our project is to first generate detailed knowledge of the age related process by studying muscle samples obtained from younger and older human subjects. We have already produced a lot of data, using a new technology called a gene chip . Gene chips provide a snap-shot of the genes switched on and off in the muscle tissue and we can then relate these profiles to the age (of physical fitness) of each subject. The analysis of all this data requires establishment of novel statistical models to cope with its complexity. The studies of each human subject can produce 60,000 data points and a data set of this size produces new challenges when trying to summarise the conclusions. We will develop new methods for this project which will be of broad use to the biomedical community, where application of similar technology is used to study cancer and other major diseases.