#Dhananjay Chaturvedi

[biotechtimes]

New method to study insect muscles developed

New Post has been published on https://biotechtimes.org/2019/07/19/new-method-to-study-insect-muscles-developed/

New method to study insect muscles developed

By Sunderarajan Padmanabhan

Twitter handle: @ndpsr

New Delhi, July 19: Much like birds, insects exhibit remarkably variable and versatile flights. Fruit flies, for instance, achieve wing beat frequencies of approximately 200 Hertz. A subset of muscles in insect thoraces called `indirect flight muscles’ power beating of the wings.

An understanding of this mechanism could help scientists how human muscles function. These muscles are the only reported large muscle group in fruit fly that shares with mammals the architecture of myofibrils, which are the basic functional units of skeletal muscle. Till now scientists have only been able to investigate the molecular details of their function. They have not been able to visualise the overall structure.

Now researchers from Bengaluru-based National Center for Biological Sciences and Manipal Academy of Higher Education have found a way to visualise the muscles using Micro-level computed tomography (microCT) scanning.

Using the new method, the researchers studied one type of indirect flight muscles called dorsal longitudinal muscles and found that their volume increased with age but differently in male and female.

“Without this method that we have developed, such studies would not have been possible. These studies were on the darling of geneticists, the humble fruit fly. Combined with the power of genetics, this method may also help us understand human muscle diseases better,” researchers observed in a statement issued by the Bangalore Life Science Cluster.

The level of very high resolution achieved by researchers enabled them to see differences and remarkable similarities between the muscles of fruit flies and honey bees.

“We now seek flight design secrets from other insects as well as what we can learn about our own muscles, supported partly by this method,” the group said.

The research team  included K. VijayRaghavan, Dhananjay Chaturvedi, Sunil Prabhakar, Krishan B. Atreya, and Aman Aggarwal. The findings have been published journal Open Biology. (India Science Wire)

[thatisprettysmart]

On Broken Wings

Orbiting around our muscle fibres, satellite cells are the speedy first responders to muscle injury. Similar to stem cells, they can transform into new tissue, plugging holes in torn muscle and helping to knit together wounds. Highlighted with a green stain, these microscopic ribbons of tissue are part of the flight muscles found in fruit fly’s wings. Each hair-like strand is a single muscle cell, containing several blob-like nuclei (red). Satellite cells have begun to repair a tear in the injured muscle on the right (middle gap), with the aim of restoring it to health, like the muscle on the left. Fruit flies share many of our genes and provide a valuable model to study many human conditions. Now that we know its satellite cells behave similarly to human ones, the fly may provide clues to repairing muscles damaged by injury, disease and ageing.

Image from work by Dhananjay Chaturvedi, Heinrich Reichert, Rajesh D Gunage and K VijayRaghavan

Department of Developmental Biology and Genetics, National Center for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore, India

Image originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)

Published in eLife, October 2017

from BPoD - Biomedical Picture of the Day https://ift.tt/2J5gPEJ