Gretchen Janes’ Individual Blog Post #1

The goal of our experiment is to determine the similarities and differences in the muscle proteins between three farmed and wild-caught organisms of different species: chicken, milkfish, and shrimp.

We hypothesized that the wild-caught organisms would have more muscle proteins because their lifestyle included larger spaces to roam and exercise. There are “data which suggest that exercise training shortens the duration of the anabolic response” of muscle protein synthesis (Atherton et al. 2012).  This could indicate that wild-caught animals that are influenced by factors such as predators and environmental changes have more muscle protein synthesis than farmed animals who do not experience those factors. In another study, it is said that the “breast muscle of chickens grows more rapidly and has a higher rate of protein synthesis than other muscles during the first few weeks after hatching” (Conlon et al. 2002). This data corroborates the notion that muscle protein can differ, although in this case it is in the same organism. It also suggests that when our experiment is run, samples should be taken from the same area of each organism and the age of the organism could be relevant to the data collected.

References:

Conlon MA, Kita K. Muscle Protein Synthesis Rate Is Altered in Response to a Single Injection of Insulin-like Growth Factor-I in Seven-Day-Old Leghorn Chicks. 2002 May 18 [accessed 2017 Feb 9]. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c30d/c423377f183afa153fc1991466ea44a61f96.pdf

Atherton P, Smith K. Muscle protein synthesis in response to nutrition and exercise. Wiley Online Library. 2012 Mar 1 [accessed 2017 Feb 9]. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/jphysiol.2011.225003/full