About this Research Topic

Background

Striated muscles are highly organized tissues composed of several cell types, including actively contracting myocytes that generate force and movement. These forces are constantly being ‘sensed’ by molecular machinery in myocytes and surrounding cells in striated muscles, which facilitate the transmission and transduction of mechanical loads into genetic and epigenetic signals that regulate muscle function and morphology. Thus, mechanisms by which mechanical signals regulate gene expression and cellular function are likely fundamental in muscle physiology, pathology, aging, and development.

Recently, advances in single-cell transcriptomics, mechanobiology, and epigenetic have begun to shed light in the complexity of the cellular landscape in striated muscles, identifying distinct transcriptional signatures and unique cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in muscle physiopathology.

The goal of this Research Topic is to bring together a collection of current research that advances our understanding of mechanical, genetic, and epigenetic signaling in cardiac and skeletal muscle development, aging, and disease, as well as the in vitro, in vivo, and in silico models that can be used to study these mechanisms. Contributors are encouraged to submit reviews, mini-reviews, commentaries, perspectives, original research articles and short communications.

Keywords: mechanotransduction, sarcomere, heart, skeletal muscle, muscle aging, muscle disease, genetics, epigenetics

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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