Does skeletal muscle have an ‘epi’-memory? The role of epigenetics in nutritional programming, metabolic disease, aging and exercise

Skeletal muscle mass, quality and adaptability are fundamental in promoting muscle performance, maintaining metabolic function and supporting longevity and healthspan. Skeletal muscle is programmable and can ‘remember’ early-life metabolic stimuli affecting its function in adult life. In this review, the authors pose the question as to whether skeletal muscle has an ‘epi’-memory? Following an initial encounter with an environmental stimulus, we discuss the underlying molecular and epigenetic mechanisms enabling skeletal muscle to adapt, should it re-encounter the stimulus in later life. We also define skeletal muscle memory and outline the scientific literature contributing to this field. Furthermore, we review the evidence for early-life nutrient stress and low birth weight in animals and human cohort studies, respectively, and discuss the underlying molecular mechanisms culminating in skeletal muscle dysfunction, metabolic disease and loss of skeletal muscle mass across the lifespan. We also summarize and discuss studies that isolate muscle stem cells from different environmental niches in vivo (physically active, diabetic, cachectic, aged) and how they reportedly remember this environment once isolated in vitro. Finally, we will outline the molecular and epigenetic mechanisms underlying skeletal muscle memory and review the epigenetic regulation of exercise-induced skeletal muscle adaptation, highlighting exercise interventions as suitable models to investigate skeletal muscle memory in humans. We believe that understanding the ‘epi’-memory of skeletal muscle will enable the next generation of targeted therapies to promote muscle growth and reduce muscle loss to enable healthy aging

Pelvic-Floor Rehabilitation, Part 1 : Comparison of Two Surface Electrode Placements During Stimulation of the Pelvic-Floor Musculature in Women Who Are Continent Using Bipolar Interferential Currents

Background and Purpose. Electrical stimulation of the pelvic floor is used as an adjunct in the conservative treatment of urinary incontinence. No consensus exists, however, regarding electrode placements for optimal stimulation of the pelvic-floor musculature. The purpose of this study was to compare two different bipolar electrode placements, one suggested by Laycock and Green (L2) the other by Dumoulin (D2), during electrical stimulation with interferential currents of the pelvic-floor musculature in continent women, using a two-group crossover design. Subjects. Ten continent female volunteers, ranging in age from 20 to 39 years (X̅=27.3, SD=5.6), were randomly assigned to one of two study groups. Methods. Each study group received neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) of the pelvic-floor musculature using both electrode placements, the order of application being reversed for each group. Force of contraction was measured as pressure (in centimeters of water [cm H2O]) exerted on a vaginal pressure probe attached to a manometer. Data were analyzed using a two-way, mixed-model analysis of variance. Results. No difference in pressure was observed between the two electrode placements. Differences in current amplitude were observed, with the D2 electrode placement requiring less current amplitude to produce a maximum recorded pressure on the manometer. Subjective assessment by the subjects revealed a preference for the D2 electrode placement (7 of 10 subjects). Conclusion and Discussion. The lower current amplitudes required with the D2 placement to obtain recordings comparable to those obtained with the L2 technique suggest a more comfortable stimulation of the pelvic-floor muscles. The lower current amplitudes required also suggest that greater increases in pressure might be obtained with the D2 placement by increasing the current amplitude while remaining within the comfort threshold. These results will help to define treatment guidelines for a planned clinical study investigating the effects of NMES and exercise in the treatment of urinary stress incontinence in women postpartum

History and Hopes of Doctoral Studies at Franklin University: Doctor of Business Administration, Doctor of Healthcare Administration, Doctor of Education in Organizational Leadership, Doctor of Education in Instructional Design Leadership, Doctor of Nursing Practice

This poster will capture the major steps and highlights along the path from planning to development through implementation and expansion. Franklin University has experienced a strong growth in our doctoral studies’ programs and we have plans for the future as well. Many, many persons form all facets of the university have played critical roles along the way, and this history will attempt to capture all those

Doctor of Business Administration at Franklin University

This poster highlights doctoral education at Franklin University, and more specifically, within the Ross College of Business with our proposed Doctor of Business Administration. We define and show the areas where Franklin University and Ross College of Business are addressing the difficulties that students face in more traditional settings and how we intend to facilitate, along with the faculty from the Doctor of Professional Studies, a community of learners at Franklin University. This poster showcases the joint research core courses for all doctoral students and highlights the major area courses within the Ross College of Business, as well as a listing of our proposed majors for near-future implementation.https://fuse.franklin.edu/ss2014/1015/thumbnail.jp

SWAN: A Distributed Knowledge Infrastructure for Alzheimer Disease Research

SWAN – a Semantic Web Application in Neuromedicine – is a project to develop an effective, integrated scientific knowledge infrastructure for the Alzheimer disease (AD) research community, using the energy and self-organization of that community, enabled by Semantic Web technology. This infrastructure may later be deployed for research communities in other neuromedical disorders. SWAN incorporates the full biomedical research knowledge lifecycle in its ontological model, including support for personal data organization, hypothesis generation, experimentation, laboratory data organization, and digital pre-publication collaboration. Community, laboratory, and personal digital resources may all be organized and interconnected using SWAN’s common semantic framework

Methylome of human skeletal muscle after acute & chronic resistance exercise training, detraining & retraining

DNA methylation is an important epigenetic modification that can regulate gene expression following environmental encounters without changes to the genetic code. Using Infinium MethylationEPIC BeadChip Arrays (850,000 CpG sites) we analysed for the first time, DNA isolated from untrained human skeletal muscle biopsies (vastus lateralis) at baseline (rest) and immediately following an acute (single) bout of resistance exercise. In the same participants, we also analysed the methylome following a period of muscle growth (hypertrophy) evoked via chronic (repeated bouts-3 sessions/wk) resistance exercise (RE) (training) over 7-weeks, followed by complete exercise cessation for 7-weeks returning muscle back to baseline levels (detraining), and finally followed by a subsequent 7-week period of RE-induced hypertrophy (retraining). These valuable methylome data sets described in the present manuscript and deposited in an open-access repository can now be shared and re-used to enable the identification of epigenetically regulated genes/ networks that are modified after acute anabolic stimuli and hypertrophy, and further investigate the phenomenon of epigenetic memory in skeletal muscle