Omics Approaches to Understanding Muscle Biology

This book is a collection of principles and current practices in omics research, applied to skeletal muscle physiology and disorders. The various sections are categorized according to the level of biological organization, namely, genomics (DNA), transcriptomics (RNA), proteomics (protein), and metabolomics (metabolite). With skeletal muscle as the unifying theme, and featuring contributions from leading experts in this traditional field of research, it highlights the importance of skeletal muscle tissue in human development, health and successful ageing. It also discusses other fascinating topics like developmental biology, muscular dystrophies, exercise, insulin resistance and atrophy due to disuse, ageing or other muscle diseases, conveying the vast opportunities for generating new hypotheses as well as testing existing hypotheses by combining high-throughput techniques with proper experiment designs, bioinformatics and statistical analyses. Presenting the latest research techniques, this book is a valuable resource for the physiology community, particularly researchers and grad students who want to explore the new opportunities for omics technologies in basic physiology research.