Comparison of Carbonylation in Young and Old Rat Skeletal Muscle

Since muscles support almost all the activity of our bodies, the relationship between aging and muscle capability is important. Dr. Edgar Arriaga from the Department of Chemistry studies the effect of age on muscle damage for different muscle types and cell regions. As part of the summer statistical collaboration program, I was on a team that collaborated with them to analyze data from a recent experiment. We built models for two cell regions separately, and also combined them into a larger model. Models included several levels of random effects. We found no evidence of age effect or muscle type effect, but did find evidence of region effect. Results are shown both numerically and graphically. Background Dr. Edgar Arriaga from the Department of Chemistry studies the effect of age on muscle damage for different muscle types and cell regions. His lab had undertaken a study to characterize oxidative damage in aging skeletal muscles. Oxidative damage is a particular kind of muscle damage, while age, muscle type and cell region are the potential effects to the damage. So they chose samples with different ages and different muscle types and measured each sample from both regions. The researchers chose rats for this experiment, due to low cost and muscle similarity between rats and human.