Each to their own: skeletal muscles of different function use different biochemical strategies during aestivation at high temperature.
Preservation of muscle morphology depends on a continuing regulatory balance between molecules that protect and molecules that damage muscle structural integrity. Excessive disruption of the biochemical balance that favours reactive oxygen species (ROS) in disused muscles may lead to oxidative stress, which in turn is associated with increased atrophic or apoptotic signalling and/or oxidative damage to the muscle and thus muscle disuse atrophy. Increases in the rate of oxygen consumption likely increase the overall generation of ROS in vivo. Temperature-induced increases in oxygen consumption rate occur in some muscles of ectotherms undergoing prolonged muscular disuse during aestivation. In the green-striped burrowing frog, Cyclorana alboguttata, both large jumping and small non-jumping muscles undergo atrophy seemingly commensurate with their rate of oxygen consumption during aestivation. However, because the extent of atrophy in these muscles is not enhanced at higher temperatures, despite a temperature-sensitive rate of oxygen consumption in the jumping muscle, we proposed that muscles are protected by biochemical means that, when mobilised at higher temperatures, inhibit atrophy. We proposed that the biochemical response to temperature would be muscle-specific. We examined the effect of temperature on the antioxidant and heat shock protein systems and determined the extent of oxidative damage to lipids and proteins in two functionally different skeletal muscles, the gastrocnemius (jumping muscle) and the iliofibularis (non-jumping muscle), by aestivating frogs at 24 and 30°C for 6 months. We assayed small molecule antioxidant capacity, mitochondrial and cytosolic superoxide dismutase activities and Hsp70 concentrations to show that protective mechanisms in disused muscles are differentially regulated with respect to both temperature and aestivation. High aestivation temperature results in an antioxidant response in the metabolically temperature-sensitive jumping muscle. We assayed lipid peroxidation and protein oxidation to show that oxidative damage is apparent during aestivation and its pattern is muscle-specific, but unaffected by temperature. Consideration is given to how the complex responses of muscle biochemistry inform the different strategies muscles may use in regulating their oxidative environment during extended disuse and disuse at high temperature.