Biological Aging of Human Skeletal Muscle

The age-related loss of skeletal muscle mass and function (sarcopenia) is one of the most dramatic changes affecting the human body. A clear understanding of the mechanisms involved is thus of paramount importance in ensuring quality of life in the old age. Most previous studies of sarcopenia in human investigated chronological aging, as they relied on comparisons between young and old subjects. Notably, no previous study has taken into consideration inter-individual differences (biological aging) in prevalence of sarcopenia. To obtain an integrative view of muscle biological aging our project uses a single biopsy from 72 well-phenotyped 80 years healthy subjects with different muscle loss/gain (PROOF cohort), to provide an extended characterization of the muscle tissue, including microstructural and omic analyses. To obtain an integrative view of biological aging, the research program 4 components encompassing: metabolomic, cellular, transcriptomic and proteomic parameters. We assess biological aging in both men and women by comparing groups with either decreased, increased or stable appendicular lean mass (ALM).