Why exercise builds muscles: titin mechanosensing controls skeletal muscle growth under load

Muscles sense internally generated and externally applied forces, responding to these in a coordinated hierarchical manner at different time scales. The center of the basic unit of the muscle, the sarcomeric M-band, is perfectly placed to sense the different types of load to which the muscle is subjected. In particular, the kinase domain (TK) of titin located at the M-band is a known candidate for mechanical signaling. Here, we develop the quantitative mathematical model that describes the kinetics of TK-based mechanosensitive signaling, and predicts trophic changes in response to exercise and rehabilitation regimes. First, we build the kinetic model for TK conformational changes under force: opening, phosphorylation, signaling and autoinhibition. We find that TK opens as a metastable mechanosensitive switch, which naturally produces a much greater signal after high-load resistance exercise than an equally energetically costly endurance effort. Next, in order for the model to be stable, give coherent predictions, in particular the lag following the onset of an exercise regime, we have to account for the associated kinetics of phosphate (carried by ATP), and for the non-linear dependence of protein synthesis rates on muscle fibre size. We suggest that the latter effect may occur via the steric inhibition of ribosome diffusion through the sieve-like myofilament lattice. The full model yields a steady-state solution (homeostasis) for muscle cross-sectional area and tension, and a quantitatively plausible hypertrophic response to training as well as atrophy following an extended reduction in tension.