Circadian mRNA expression in skeletal muscle of young and aged mice

Aging animals undergo a variety of changes in molecular processes. Among these, the cellular circadian clock has been shown to change as animals age. Moreover, there is evidence that also core circadian clock proteins could influence the ageing behavior of vertebrates. To investigate the interplay between aging and the circadian clock, we studied circadian mRNA expression in skeletal muscles from young (8 weeks) and aged (80 weeks) mice. In order to detect differences in circadian patterns, we used microarray-based transcriptome-wide time series of mRNA expression, containing 16 independent measurements for both young and aged animals. Each individual time point consists of total RNA from hind limb skeletal muscles from 3 different animals. Young and aged mice where entrained to 12 hr/12 hr light-dark conditions. From these mice, hind limb skeletal muscles were extracted at different times of day, in order to measure circadian mRNA expression patterns.