Modeling Muscle Growth

Ever wonder how your workouts actually build muscle? The higher the load, the greater increase in size. Why and how this happens makes for interesting research. We all differ in physiology and daily activities, hence posing a challenge to perform controlled studies of changes in muscle size in people. Extracting muscle cells doesn’t replicate the environment of a cell in an individual working out. 

 Muscles are comprised of microscopic filaments which sense and signal changes in force. Titin is a large protein that when under tension will generate a chemical signal affecting muscle growth. The greater the load, the greater the number of signalling molecules. This generates a cascading effect whereby an increased production of mRNA will induce synthesis of new muscle proteins and a subsequent increase in size of the muscle cell.

 Researchers out of the University of Cambridge have recently developed mathematical models to predict muscle growth by honing in on the mechanosensing capabilities of the titin molecule (Terentjev et al., 2021). Investigating how muscles sense and respond to workloads at the molecular level will eventually lead to more individualized training protocols whether it be to maximize training stimuli for the elite athlete or mitigate muscle atrophy from an injury. Although highly complex, mathematical models such as this will perhaps eventually aid in refining the training protocol to best suit the athlete’s needs and goals.