A Northwestern Medicine study published in Science Advances revealed that circadian rhythms influence muscle regeneration. The research, led by Dr. Clara Peek, demonstrated that mice healed faster when muscle damage occurred during their active hours. By conducting single-cell sequencing on muscle tissue, the study highlighted how time of day affects inflammatory responses in muscle stem cells, critical for the regenerative process. The findings suggest that circadian biology plays a vital role in muscle healing, with potential relevance for understanding conditions like aging and obesity.
In each of our cells, we have genes that form the molecular circadian clock. These clock genes encode a set of transcription factors that regulate many processes throughout the body and align them with the appropriate time of day.
We discovered that the cells' signaling to each other was much stronger right after injury when mice were injured during their wake period. That was an exciting finding and is further evidence that the circadian regulation of muscle regeneration is dictated by this stem cell-immune cell crosstalk.
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