Older human muscle showed a muted molecular exercise response
An experiment in healthy young and older people found weaker changes in chemical tags on muscle proteins after resistance exercise and essential amino acid intake.
Limit: Only acute molecular responses were reported, not long-term muscle growth or strength
Edited by Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
Healthy young and older people took part in an experiment examining muscle responses to resistance exercise and intake of essential amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Researchers analyzed muscle proteins and their phosphate tags, chemical additions that can change how proteins work.
Compared with younger muscle, older muscle showed broadly dampened changes in these tags after the growth stimulus. Yet activation of a protein complex involved in controlling cell growth remained intact in older muscle. The authors highlighted molecular pathways that could be explored in developing therapies for aging muscle.
Why it matters
Understanding the molecular processes behind age-related limits on muscle growth may help identify targets for therapies for aging muscle.
Caveats
The abstract reports acute molecular responses rather than long-term changes in muscle growth or strength. This preprint has not been peer-reviewed, and its abstract does not give participant numbers or exact ages.
The paper
Ageing blunts the phospho-proteomic response to resistance exercise in humans
University of Technology Sydney
bioRxiv, Jun 5, 2026, Open access, CC BY, Preprint, not peer-reviewed
