Modulating skeletal muscle mass by postnatal, muscle-specific inactivation of the myostatin gene

✍ Scribed by Luc Grobet; Dimitri Pirottin; Frédéric Farnir; Dominique Poncelet; Luis Jose Royo; Benoît Brouwers; Elisabeth Christians; Daniel Desmecht; Freddy Coignoul; Ronald Kahn; Michel Georges

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 494 KB
• Volume: 35
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1526-954X
• DOI: 10.1002/gene.10188

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

By using a conditional gene targeting approach exploiting the cre‐lox system, we show that postnatal inactivation of the myostatin gene in striated muscle is sufficient to cause a generalized muscular hypertrophy of the same magnitude as that observed for constitutive myostatin knockout mice. This formally demonstrates that striated muscle is the production site of functional myostatin and that this member of the TGFβ family of growth and differentiation factors regulates muscle mass not only during early embryogenesis but throughout development. It indicates that myostatin antagonist could be used to treat muscle wasting and to promote muscle growth in man and animals. genesis 35:227–238, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.