Myostatin, encoded by the MSTN gene (previously GDF8), is a member of the transforming growth factor-β superfamily, which normally acts to limit skeletal muscle mass by regulating the number and growth of muscle fibers. In this study, a total of 84 myostatin gene sequences with known complete coding regions (CDS) and corresponding amino acid sequences were analyzed from 17 species, and differen...

Myostatin is a negative regulator of muscle growth, and absence of the functional myostatin protein leads to the heavy muscle phenotype in both mouse and cattle. Although the role of myostatin in controlling muscle mass is established, little is known of the mechanisms regulating the expression of the myostatin gene. In this study, we have characterized the murine myostatin promoter in vivo. Va...

Levels of myostatin expression and physical activity have both been associated with transcriptome dysregulation and skeletal muscle hypertrophy. The transcriptome of triceps brachii muscles from male C57/BL6 mice corresponding to two genotypes (wild-type and myostatin-reduced) under two conditions (high and low physical activity) was characterized using RNA-Seq. Synergistic and antagonistic int...

Myostatin negatively regulates muscle growth and development and has recently been characterized in several fishes. We measured fasting myostatin mRNA levels in adult tilapia skeletal muscle and in whole larvae. Although fasting reduced some growth indexes in adults, skeletal muscle myostatin mRNA levels were unaffected. By contrast, larval myostatin mRNA levels were sometimes elevated after a ...

Myostatin represses muscle growth by negatively regulating the number and size of muscle fibers. Myostatin lossof- function can result in the double-muscling phenotype and increased muscle mass. Thus, knockout of myostatin gene could improve the quality of meat from mammals. In the present study, zinc finger nucleases, a useful tool for generating gene knockout animals, were designed to target ...

Myostatin, which is a member of the TGF-beta superfamily, is a negative regulator of skeletal muscle formation. Double-muscled Piedmontese cattle have a C313Y mutation in myostatin and show increased skeletal muscle mass which resulted from an increase of myofiber number (hyperplasia) without that of myofiber size (hypertrophy). To examine whether this mutation in myostatin gene affects muscle ...

There is much interest in developing anti-myostatin agents to reverse or prevent muscle atrophy in adults, so it is important to characterize the effects of reducing myostatin activity after normal muscle development. For assessment of the effect of loss of myostatin signaling on gene expression in muscle, RNA from mice with postdevelopmental myostatin knockout was analyzed with oligonucleotide...

By using a conditional gene targeting approach exploiting the cre-lox system, we show that postnatal inactivation of the myostatin gene in striated muscle is sufficient to cause a generalized muscular hypertrophy of the same magnitude as that observed for constitutive myostatin knockout mice. This formally demonstrates that striated muscle is the production site of functional myostatin and that...

Myostatin, or GDF-8 (growth and differentiation factor-8), was first identified through sequence identity with members of the BMP (bone morphogenetic protein)/TGF-beta (transforming growth factor-beta) superfamily. The skeletal-muscle-specific expression pattern of myostatin suggested a role in muscle development. Mice with a targeted deletion of the myostatin gene exhibit a hypermuscular pheno...

Caveolin-3, the muscle-specific isoform of caveolins, plays important roles in signal transduction. Dominant-negative mutations of the caveolin-3 gene cause autosomal dominant limb-girdle muscular dystrophy 1C (LGMD1C) with loss of caveolin-3. However, identification of the precise molecular mechanism leading to muscular atrophy in caveolin-3-deficient muscle has remained elusive. Myostatin, a ...