Abstract
In vivo muscle function testing has become of great interest as primary phenotypic analysis of muscle performance. This protocol provides detailed procedures to perform the treadmill exhaustion test and the whole-limb grip strength assay, two methods commonly used in the neuromuscular research field.
Keywords: Exhaustion test, Grip strength, Mice, Muscle, Treadmill
Background
Muscle diseases usually lead to alterations in skeletal muscle function. Non-invasive in vivo tests that can evaluate muscle performance are therefore of considerable value as primary phenotypic screening. Here, we describe how to perform the treadmill exhaustion test, which evaluates exercise capacity and endurance, and the limb grip strength assay, which measures muscular strength. In the treadmill exhaustion test, the mice are forced to run to exhaustion over a conveyor belt with gradually increasing speed. The limb grip strength assay uses a horizontal grip–that is grasped by the mouse–to measure the maximum force that is required to make the mouse release it. These tests can be easily customized to evaluate muscle performance under different situations, such as after therapeutic interventions or regeneration (Benchaouir et al., 2007; Puzzo et al., 2016), or to study the potential roles of specific genes on muscle physiopathology (Waning et al., 2015; Bi et al., 2016; Yue et al., 2016).
Materials and Reagents
Equipment
Software
Procedure
Data analysis
Notes
Acknowledgments
This protocol has been adapted from our previous work published in Elife (Bi et al., 2016) and Cell Reports (Yue et al., 2016) and partially supported by a grant from United States National Institutes of Health to SK (1R01AR071649). Beatriz Castro acknowledges support from the Alfonso Martin Escudero Foundation.
References
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