Single Skeletal Muscle Fiber Mechanics and Myosin Kinetics in Human Aging

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Project Summary This application for a Mentored Research Scientist Development Award (K01) describes a training program and research project that provides the candidate with the necessary skills and laboratory-based techniques to conduct clinical research studies and to make the transition to an independent researcher. Candidate: The candidate's long term goal is to develop his own research program focusing on the structural and functional alterations in human skeletal muscle that result from aging, disuse and disease. The candidate is a Research Associate at the University of Vermont with a background in engineering. He has, for the first time, applied the novel technique of sinusoidal analysis to single human skeletal muscle fibers; thereby allowing the first examinations of the molecular determinants of contractile function in humans. Environment: The University of Vermont is ideally suited to the candidate's proposed research and training. It includes a cohesive group of clinicians and basic science researchers engaged in clinical research and muscle physiology that examines function at the whole body, whole muscle, single fiber and single molecule levels. Research: The objective of the proposed research study is to characterize the molecular mechanisms underlying age-related changes in single human skeletal muscle fiber function. We hypothesize that aging impairs single fiber function by: 1) altering myosin kinetics (increasing myosin attachment time and decreasing myosin rate of force production) and 2) decreasing myosin heavy chain content. To test these hypotheses, contractile performance and myofibrillar protein expression from single skeletal muscle fibers will be obtained from young (21-35 yrs old) and elderly (65-75 yrs old) volunteers. The proposed studies will represent the first comprehensive examination of the mechanisms underlying human skeletal muscle contractile dysfunction with aging at the molecular level. Relevance: Understanding age-related skeletal muscle contractile dysfunction at the level of the myosin- actin cross-bridge is a necessary step towards developing more effective pharmacological and lifestyle countermeasures to correct sarcopenia that are directed specifically at molecular defects.