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Alternative splicing regulates the physiological adaptation of the mouse hind limb postural and phasic muscles to microgravity

Metadata Updated: August 30, 2025

We sought to comprehensively elucidate the transcriptomic underpinnings of microgravity-induced muscle phenotypes in mice by evaluating both differential gene expression (DGE) and changes in alternative splicing (AS) due to extended spaceflight. Total RNA was isolated from the gastrocnemius and quadriceps, postural and phasic muscles of the hind limb, respectively, of 32-week-old female BALB/c mice exposed to microgravity or ground control conditions for nine weeks. RNA sequencing revealed that DGE and AS varied across postural and phasic muscle types with preferential employment of DGE in the gastrocnemius and AS in the quadriceps. Gene ontology analysis indicated that DGE and AS regulate distinct molecular processes. Various non-differentially expressed transcripts encoding musculoskeletal proteins (Tnnt3, Tnnt1, Neb, Ryr1, and Ttn) and muscle-specific RNA binding splicing regulators (Mbnl1 and Rbfox1) were found to have significant changes in AS that altered critical functional domains of their protein products. In striking contrast, microgravity-induced differentially expressed genes were associated with translation/ribosomal function and lipid metabolism. Our work serves as the first comprehensive investigation of coordinate changes in DGE and AS in large limb muscles across spaceflight. We propose that substantial remodeling of pre-mRNA by AS is a major component of transcriptomic adaptation of skeletal muscle to microgravity. The alternatively spliced genes identified here could be targeted by small molecule splicing regulator therapies to address microgravity-induced changes in muscle during spaceflight.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date August 30, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date August 30, 2025
Publisher Open Science Data Repository
Maintainer
Identifier 10.26030/f1jn-8s98
Data Last Modified 2025-08-21
Category Biological and Physical Sciences
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id e95a0b1b-08d4-4b42-b288-4afdabe5581d
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://osdr.nasa.gov/bio/repo/data/missions/SpaceX-11
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 2469fdae5f0bb045be3775cb390256cbd86b1aae30fee43bbc0e2fd6f3f6fb22
Source Schema Version 1.1

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