An exploration of metabolite and gene responses in mouse skeletal muscles responding to acute sedentary hypoxia

Abstract Skeletal muscles are involved in responses to acute hypoxia as the largest organ in the body. However, as a hypoxic-tolerant tissue, responses in skeletal muscles caused by acute sedentary hypoxia are much less studied. We measured metabolites in skeletal muscles from mice exposed to 8% O2 for 0 minute, 15 minutes and 2 hours and studied the potential relationship between metabolite levels and mRNA levels by reconstructing genome-based metabolic networks and meta-analyzing differentially expressed genes acquired in skeletal muscles after 2 hours of 8% O2 exposure. The metabolite measurement indicated a significant increase in glutamine metabolism but not lactate metabolism in mouse skeletal muscles after 2 hours of hypoxia, where the metabolic responses as a whole were moderate. The central-dogma based metabolic flux analysis suggested an involvement of glutamine metabolism, though, as a whole, metabolite changes and gene changes didn’t show a high correlation. Among metaoblites, glutamine metabolism indicated a significant response and a consistent change which could be interpreted by genome-based network analysis. In summary, though this study suggested a moderate metabolic response which has a weak correlation with gene expression change as a whole, glutamine metabolism indicated rapid responses in skeletal muscles responding to acute sedentary hypoxia.