Skeletal muscle is not only a popular topic in the gyms and football clubs of Munich. There is also a large skeletal muscle research community that researches everything from muscle development, muscle disease, muscle ageing to muscles in athletes. Since 2016, the Munich muscle research community meets regularly. On May 16th, 34 of us met for the 9th Munich Muscle Meeting.
The latest meeting was opened by our main speaker Prof. Dr. Eric Schirmer from the Centre for Cell Biology at the University of Edinburgh. Eric Schirmer’s group does research in muscle diseases that occur when nuclear membrane proteins become defect because of a DNA mutation. The group studies how these proteins contribute to organise the genome within a nucleus and how genes are switched on and off in healthy and diseased cells.
The second talk was by Dr. Maria Spletter, Dept. of Physiological Chemistry at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Maria Spletter studies so-called alternative RNA splicing in the muscle of the fruit fly. Alternative splicing occurs in many genes, may regulate some adaptation to exercise and cause some diseases including muscle diseases. Maria Spletter showed how defective splicing can have severe effects on flight muscle function so flies struggle to fly.
Julian Kruse (Experimental Surgery and Regenerative Medicine, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich) then showed how the so-called Slit-Robo genes help a muscle to develop.
In the end, Prof. Dr. Henning Wackerhage from the Exercise Biology group at TUM showed how the signalling protein YAP regulates the secretion of proteins from muscle cells. It is known that muscles can generate muscle hormones termed myokines, so this work shows mechanisms by which these muscle hormones are produced.
We would like to thank Prof. Görlach and Dr. Petry for the local organisation and are looking forward to the 10th meeting which will be organised by Prof. Dr. Benedikt Schoser at the Friedrich Baur Institute.
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