During the development and regeneration of skeletal muscle, many growth factors, such as basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF, FGF-2) and myostatin, have been shown to play regulating roles. bFGF contributes to promote proliferation and to inhibit differentiation of skeletal muscle, whereas myostatin plays a series of contrasting roles. In order to elucidate whether the expression of bFGF has a...

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 is a secreted protein that normally acts to limit skeletal muscle growth. As a result, there is considerable interest in developing agents capable of blocking myostatin activity, as such agents could have widespread applications for the treatment of muscle degenerative and wasting conditions. Myostatin normally exists in an inactive state in which the mature C-terminal portion of the ...

Myostatin inhibits myoblast proliferation and differentiation in developing muscle. Mounting evidence suggests that myostatin also plays a limiting role in growth/repair/regeneration of differentiated adult muscle by inhibiting satellite cell activation. We tested the hypothesis that myostatin mRNA expression would decrease after resistance loading (RL) with a blunted response in older (O) fema...

Deletion or inhibition of myostatin in mammals has been demonstrated to markedly increase muscle mass by hyperplasia, hypertrophy, or a combination of both. Despite a remarkably high degree of conservation with the mammalian protein, the function of myostatin remains unknown in fish, many species of which continue muscle growth throughout the lifecycle by hyperplasia. Transgenic rainbow trout (...

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play an imperative role in cell proliferation, differentiation, and cell metabolism through regulation of gene expression. Skeletal muscle hypertrophy that results from myostatin depression by its propeptide provides an interesting model to understand how miRNA transcriptome is involved in myostatin-based fiber hypertrophy. This study employed Solexa deep sequencing followed ...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW This review summarizes recent progress in the development of myostatin inhibitors for the treatment of muscle wasting disorders. It also focuses on findings in myostatin biology that may have implications for the development of antimyostatin therapies. RECENT FINDINGS There has been progress in evaluating antimyostatin therapies in animal models of muscle wasting disorders. ...

We cloned and characterized a 3.3-kb fragment containing the 5'-regulatory region of the human myostatin gene. The promoter sequence contains putative muscle growth response elements for glucocorticoid, androgen, thyroid hormone, myogenic differentiation factor 1, myocyte enhancer factor 2, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor, and nuclear factor-kappaB. To identify sites important for my...