Issue | September 2018 | The Muscle Issue

Features

Gene Editing Could One Day Treat Muscle Disorders

Sandeep Ravindran | Aug 30, 2018

Scientists race to develop CRISPR therapies that could save the lives of kids with muscle-wasting conditions.

Muscle Clocks Play a Role in Regulating Metabolism

Diana Kwon | Sep 1, 2018

Just 20 years ago, scientists didn’t even realize muscles had their own circadian clocks. Now they are beginning to appreciate their importance in health.

How Muscles Age, and How Exercise Can Slow It

Gillian Butler-Browne, Vincent Mouly, Anne Bigot, Capucine Trollet | Sep 1, 2018

Researchers untangle the multifarious nature of muscle aging. So far, the only reliable treatment is exercise.

Contributors

Meet some of the people featured in the September 2018 issue of The Scientist.

Editorial

No Enemy

Science journalists are essential to advancing the quality of the research enterprise.

Speaking of Science

Ten-Minute Sabbatical

Take a break from the bench to puzzle and peruse.

Freeze Frame

Caught on Camera

Selected Images of the Day from the-scientist.com

Notebook

Vibrations Restore Sense of Movement in Prosthetics

Scientists recreate proprioception for people with artificial arms using a perceptual illusion.

Nest Herbs Encourage Starling Parents to Incubate Their Eggs

The presence of aromatic greens in with other building materials increased the time birds sat on their eggs, improving the health of the hatchlings.

Rat Remains Reveal Landscape Changes Wrought by Human Settlement of Polynesia

Isotope changes in the bones demonstrate a similar pattern across far-flung islands.

Soft Robotics Find a Place in the Ocean

Scientists who designed a marine robot to survey ocean life were inspired by eel larvae.

Critic at Large

Opinion: Stop Ignoring This Filament Crucial to Muscle Function

Titin was discovered four decades ago, but some physiology textbooks fail to recognize the important role it plays in muscle contraction.

Modus Operandi

Putting Exosomes to Work

Researchers identify a handy tool for tinkering with the versatile vesicles.

The Literature

How Red Blood Cells Get Their Dimples

Myosin proteins tug on the cell membrane, giving an erythrocyte its distinct shape.

Old Age Has Links to Redox Stress in Muscles

Even if people exercise, hydrogen peroxide and other reactive molecules continue to accumulate in the tissues.

Muscles Hold a Key to Sleep Recovery

A protein in skeletal muscles helps mice recover from sleep deprivation.

Profile

Muscle Master: Angela Dulhunty

Having pioneered the study of muscle physiology in mammals, she uncovered how ion channels enable muscle movement.

Scientist to Watch

Avnika Ruparelia’s Fish Reveal Secrets of Muscle Diseases and Aging

The muscle biologist developed a zebrafish model for myofibrillar myopathies and is working with killifish to study muscle regeneration.

Lab Tools

Speeding Up Stem Cell Growth

Scientists fiddle with formulas to boost the growth of their stem cell cultures.

Bio Business

New ALS Therapies Move Closer to the Clinic

After two decades of failure, novel scientific insights and technical progress are spurring meaningful innovation in the field.

Reading Frames

Sandeep Jauhar’s New Book, Heart, is a Personal History

In this adapted excerpt from the book, the author relays the past, present, and future of artificial hearts.

Foundations

Homo sapiens Exposed, 1556

Juan Valverde de Amusco’s anatomical drawings corrected some earlier errors while making anatomy more accessible.

Infographics

Infographic: How Muscles Age

Numerous cellular changes underlie the decline of muscle mass and strength in the elderly.

Infographic: The Role of Circadian Clocks in Muscle

Timekeepers in muscle help mediate metabolism, and may influence neurological processes such as sleep.

Infographic: Treating Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy with CRISPR

The disease is caused by mutations in a single gene. Can gene editing fix the problem?

Infographic: Triggering Titin

This third filament involved in muscle function is often ignored in medical textbooks. Here's how it works.

Infographic: Exploring New Therapeutic Targets in ALS

Biological insights from the last decade of research on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis are revealing novel opportunities for treatment.

Infographic: Red Blood Cell Shape

What happens when myosin inside red blood cells can't do its job?

Infographic: Directing Exosome Traffic

Researchers harness a protein to send cargo-carrying exosomes to mouse muscles.

September 2018

The Muscle Issue

The dynamic tissue reveals its secrets