Muscles are essential in every way to our existence. It is an aspect of ourselves that we often take for granted because of the ease with which me make an action with minimal conscious thought, like lifting a fork to our mouths. I would like to reflect on the chalk talk delivered by Yaneli Guerra Hernandez entailing the exploration of TREM2 gene and its hypothesized impact in muscle regeneration.
Macrophages are a core aspect of muscle regeneration, henceforth muscle is limited in scope to skeletal muscle tissue as it is the focus of Yaneli’s lab. A macrophage enters damaged muscle tissue as a M1 macrophage. The M1 macrophage removes cellular debris through cytokines and attenuates the inflammation. Afterward, the macrophage gets polarized and transitions into an M2 macrophage. The role of the M2 macrophage is to induce muscle cell regeneration and reconstruct the lost muscle fibers.
The experiment relies on two categories of mice: a knockout mice without expression of the TREM2 gene and a wild type. Through hind limb ischemia surgery (litigation of the femoral artery in the hind leg) and subsequent collecting of muscle tissues and later dissociation of cells into individual populations, further processing (e.g. by fluorescent activated cell sorting) allows for techniques to assess the level of expression of M1 and M2 macrophages.
Besides the crystal clear enunciation by Yaneli and her concise, meaningful sentences which made her talk extremely enjoyable to follow, the concept of muscular regeneration is extremely fascinating to me. Being able to circumscribe the signaling molecules crucial to successful muscular regeneration would have immense impacts for many non-infectious conditions/diseases and healthcare, especially for muscular dystrophy. It is heartbreaking to have a condition with muscle atrophy as a symptom and slowly watch as someone loses the ability to move their body, lift their head, and breathe. Overall, the delivery was exceptional, and I will be curious and awaiting the results.
