The body’s main internal clock controls daily energy patterns in muscle stem cells

In mice, quiescent muscle stem-cell metabolic rhythms were driven mainly by the brain’s central clock through feeding-fasting cycles rather than by the stem cells’ own clock.

This mechanistic mouse study used satellite cell-specific Bmal1 reconstitution and rhythmic gene-expression and muscle-repair analyses to show that 24-hour metabolic gene oscillations in satellite cells depended on central clock input and intact autophagy.

Because this is a mouse stem-cell and muscle-repair study, the results define a central-clock control pathway in quiescent satellite cells rather than direct evidence in humans.