Biological Aging of Human Skeletal Muscle. 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. Overall design: 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).

与年龄相关的骨骼肌质量与功能丧失（sarcopenia，肌少症）是影响人体的最显著生理变化之一。明确其背后的作用机制，对保障老年群体的生活质量至关重要。既往针对人类肌少症的多数研究均聚焦于实龄衰老，这类研究多依托年轻与老年受试者的对照分析开展。值得注意的是，此前尚无研究考虑肌少症患病率存在的个体间差异（即生物衰老）。为全面解析肌肉生物衰老的全貌，本项目采集了72名表型特征明确的80岁健康受试者的单次肌肉活检样本（PROOF队列），这些受试者的肌肉量存在不同程度的丢失或增加；项目将对肌肉组织进行多维度表征，包括微观结构分析与各类组学分析。研究整体设计：为全面解析生物衰老的全貌，本研究计划涵盖四大核心模块，即代谢组学、细胞学、转录组学与蛋白质组学相关参数分析。本研究通过对比四肢瘦体重（ALM，appendicular lean mass）分别降低、增加或保持稳定的男女受试者群体，以此评估其生物衰老状态。