Expression levels of sarcolemmal membrane repair proteins following prolonged exercise training in mice

Membrane repair is a conserved cellular process, where intracellular vesicles translocate to sites of plasma membrane injury to actively reseal membrane disruptions. Such membrane disruptions commonly occur in the course of normal physiology, particularly in skeletal muscles due to repeated contraction producing small tears in the sarcolemmal membrane. Here, we investigated whether prolonged exercise could produce adaptive changes in expression levels of proteins associated with the membrane repair process, including mitsugumin 53/tripartite motif-containing protein 72 (MG53/TRIM72), dysferlin and caveolin-3 (cav3). Mice were exercised using a treadmill running protocol and protein levels were measured by immunoblotting. The specificity of the antibodies used was established by immunoblot testing of various tissue lysates from both mice and rats. We found that MG53/TRIM72 immunostaining on isolated mouse skeletal muscle fibers showed protein localization at sites of membrane disruption created by the isolation of these muscle fibers. However, no significant changes in the expression levels of the tested membrane repair proteins were observed following prolonged treadmill running for eight weeks (30 to 80 min/day). These findings suggest that any compensation occurring in the membrane repair process in skeletal muscle following prolonged exercise does not affect the expression levels of these three key membrane repair proteins.