Effect of fasting on mouse skeletal muscle mRNA levels

Fasting increases the level of skeletal muscle ATF4 mRNA, which promotes skeletal myofiber atrophy. To begin to determine the mechanism of ATF4-mediated myofiber atrophy, we compared the effects of fasting and ATF4 overexpression on global skeletal muscle mRNA expression in C57BL/6 mice. These data are from experiments to determine the effect of fasting. Mice were allowed ad libitum access to food or fasted for 24 h before TA muscle RNA was harvested. RNA from 3 mice per group was pooled, and then subjected to exon expression array analysis. mRNA levels under fasting conditions were normalized to levels under nonfasting conditions, which were set at 1. These experiments were performed 4 times to generate the final data.