Measurement of intracellular signals. Muscle tissue samples (100-200 mg) will be immediately quick-frozen in liquid nitrogen following biopsy, and kept under liquid nitrogen until analyzed. Expression of NF-κB fragment will be measured using an ELISA kit (TransAM, Active Motif, ), Total protein abundance of matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) and FKBP12 will be measured using Western blotting. Phosphorylation of Akt, AMPKα, mTOR, S6K1, FoxO, eIF-2β, eIF-4, 4E-BP1, Smad2/3 and GSK-3β will be measured with phospho-Akt (Ser473) antibody, phospho-AMPKα (Thr172), phospho-mTOR (Ser2448) antibody, phosphor-p70 S6 kinase (Thr389) antibody, phospho-FoxO1 (Ser256), phosphor-FoxO3a (Ser318/321) antibody, phospho-FoxO3a (Ser192) antibody, phospho-eIF-2β (Ser 540) antibody, phospho-eIF-4E (Ser 209) antibody, phosphor-4E-BP1 (Thr37/46) antibody, phospho-Smad2 (Ser465/467) antibody, phospho-Smad3 (Ser423/425) antibody and phospho-GSK-3β (Ser9) antibody (Cell Signaling Technology, Inc., Beverly, MA), respectively, and chemiluminescence autoradiography as previously described (47). Western blot signals will be analyzed with a BioRad ChemiDoc Chemiluminescence imaging system (BioRad, Hercules, CA), which detects ECL signals over 5 orders of magnitude, and its sensitivity range far exceeds that of conventional densitometry.