Beyond Muscle Mass: What Murine Muscle Function Reveals
Beyond Muscle Mass: What Murine Muscle Function Reveals
Explore how direct measurements of skeletal muscle function can reveal the effects of disease, aging, exercise, and experimental interventions beyond what muscle mass, histology, or molecular markers can show alone.
Muscle mass and molecular or histological findings do not always predict how well a muscle can generate force, resist fatigue, or withstand injury. Direct muscle-function assessment provides critical insight into disease severity, mechanisms of weakness, physiological adaptation, and responses to genetic, pharmacological, nutritional, and exercise interventions.
In this webinar, Dr. Chris Perry and Dr. Arthur Cheng will discuss the complementary roles of in vivo, in situ, and in vitro approaches and the biological questions each can help answer. Drawing on applications in disease models and intervention studies, they will examine how functional measurements connect whole-animal performance with muscle, cellular, and molecular outcomes, strengthen preclinical therapy development, and guide downstream mechanistic investigation.
Key Learning Objectives:
- Explain why muscle mass, histology, and molecular markers may not accurately predict functional capacity.
- Compare the advantages and limitations of in vivo, in situ, and in vitro muscle-function assessments.
- Identify the biological insights provided by measurements of strength, contractile kinetics, fatigability, and susceptibility to injury.
- Select muscles, experimental models, and functional outcomes based on the research question.
- Relate muscle-function measurements to disease severity, physiological mechanisms, treatment response, and clinically relevant outcomes.
Speaker
Christopher Perry, PhD
Professor, School of Kinesiology and Health Science & Associate Vice President of Research and Innovation, York University
Dr. Christopher Perry is a Professor in York University’s School of Kinesiology & Associate Vice President of Research and Innovation at York University. His research examines how disruptions in skeletal muscle metabolism contribute to weakness in conditions including Duchenne muscular dystrophy, cancer cachexia, and chemotherapy-induced muscle weakness. Using rodent models, human muscle biopsies, and cell cultures, his laboratory investigates muscle function, mitochondrial bioenergetics, oxidative stress, and calcium regulation to inform new therapies and disease-specific exercise interventions. Dr. Perry also shares his expertise through international training workshops and collaborations with academic and pharmaceutical partners.
Arthur Cheng, PhD
Interim Director of the Muscle Health Research Centre, York University
Dr. Arthur Cheng is an Associate Professor in York University’s School of Kinesiology & Health Science. His research investigates the cellular mechanisms underlying skeletal muscle weakness, fatigue, and post-exercise recovery, with particular emphasis on how excitation-contraction coupling influences force generation in healthy and diseased muscle. His laboratory uses translational approaches spanning single muscle fibers, intact muscle, whole-animal models, and human studies. Dr. Cheng applies these findings to the development of pharmacological, nutritional, and exercise-based strategies that improve muscle strength, fatigue resistance, performance, and recovery across aging and disease-affected populations.
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