Wasting Away

Skeletal muscles connect to your bones. They allow you to perform a wide range of different movements and functions, and also make up a significant portion of your body mass. But as we get older, our muscles get weaker, but we don’t really know why that happens. There are also a range of other conditions that lead to muscle wastage like cancer or diabetes. Crucially, muscle weakening isn’t just a symptom of these conditions, it contributes to mortality. In fact, preventing the loss of skeletal muscle mass increased survival in mice with cancer. The key question is how can we prevent wastage? Researchers studied the gene Deaf1 in fruit flies and found that too much Deaf1 activity caused a decrease in muscle size (right; compare areas outlined in white). By understanding how the size of muscle fibres is regulated we can find ways to age more healthily.

Written by Sophie Arthur

Sophie Arthur

former Science Communications Officer MRC LMS

Formerly a stem cell biologist, Sophie has since moved into science communication working at the MRC LMS. She also writes an award winning science and education blog Soph talks science.

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• Image adapted from work by Flavia A. Graca and colleagues
• Department of Developmental Neurobiology, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in PLOS Genetics, November 2021