Transcription factor (TF) regulation is often post-translational. TF modifications such as reversible phosphorylation and missense mutations, which can act independent of TF expression level, are overlooked by differential expression analysis. Using bovine Piedmontese myostatin mutants as proof-of-concept, we propose a new algorithm that correctly identifies the gene containing the causal mutat...

Glucocorticoids mediate muscle atrophy in many catabolic states. Myostatin expression, a negative regulator of muscle growth, is increased by glucocorticoids and myostatin overexpression is associated with lower muscle mass. This suggests that myostatin is required for the catabolic effects of glucocorticoids. We therefore investigated whether myostatin gene disruption could prevent muscle atro...

Mutations in the myostatin gene are associated with hypermuscularity, suggesting that myostatin inhibits skeletal muscle growth. We postulated that increased tissue-specific expression of myostatin protein in skeletal muscle would induce muscle loss. To investigate this hypothesis, we generated transgenic mice that overexpress myostatin protein selectively in the skeletal muscle, with or withou...

Myostatin, a member of the transforming growth factor-beta superfamily, is a negative regulator of skeletal muscle growth. Cattle with mutations that inactivate myostatin exhibit a remarkable increase in mass of skeletal muscle called double muscling that is accompanied by an equally remarkable decrease in carcass fat. Although a mouse knockout model has been created which results in mice with ...

Myostatin is a TGF-β family member that normally acts to limit skeletal muscle mass. Follistatin is a myostatin-binding protein that can inhibit myostatin activity in vitro and promote muscle growth in vivo. Mice homozygous for a mutation in the Fst gene have been shown to die immediately after birth but have a reduced amount of muscle tissue, consistent with a role for follistatin in regulatin...

Glucocorticoids production is increased in many pathological conditions that are associated with muscle loss, but their role in causing muscle wasting is not fully understood. We have demonstrated a new mechanism of glucocorticoid-induced muscle atrophy: Dexamethasone (Dex) suppresses satellite cell function contributing to the development of muscle atrophy. Specifically, we found that Dex decr...

Cortisol, the primary corticosteroid in teleost fishes, is released in response to stressors to elicit local functions, however little is understood regarding muscle-specific responses to cortisol in these fishes. In mammals, glucocorticoids strongly regulate the muscle growth inhibitor, myostatin, via glucocorticoid response elements (GREs) leading to muscle atrophy. Bioinformatics methods sug...

myostatin or growth and differentiation factor 8 (gdf8), has been known as the factor causing double muscling phenotypes in which a series of mutations make the myostatin protein inactive, hence disabling it to regulate the deposition of muscle fibre. this phenotype happens with high frequency in a breed of sheep known as the texel. quantitative trait loci (qtl) studies show that a portion of t...

Growth hormone (GH), insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I), and testosterone (T) are important mediators of muscle protein synthesis, and thus muscle mass, all of which decline with age. We hypothesized that circulating hormones would be related to the transcriptional levels of their respective receptors and that this expression would be negatively related to expression of the myostatin gene. We...