Research
Hormonal
Blocking myostatin signaling prevents muscle wasting and induces hypertrophy in adult skeletal muscle.
Myostatin is a protein that limits muscle growth. Blocking it (experimentally via drugs or genetically) causes muscles to grow larger and prevents wasting. For natural training, understanding this helps explain why some people hit a 'genetic ceiling' on growth, as their myostatin levels may be higher.
GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
In adult skeletal muscle, muscle hypertrophy can be induced and muscle wasting prevented by blocking myostatin either via postdevelopmental myostatin gene knockout, or with follistatin (a myostatin antagonist) or anti-myostatin antibodies or a soluble ActRIIB decoy receptor.
Why this rating
Supported by genetic knockout models and transfection experiments in animals.
Source
Regulation of skeletal muscle growth by the IGF1-Akt/PKB pathway: insights from genetic models
Stefano Schiaffino et al. · Skeletal Muscle · 2011
DOI 10.1186/2044-5040-1-4
narrative_reviewCited 804×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Activation of the IGF1-Akt/PKB pathway in skeletal muscle drives hypertrophy by simultaneously stimulating protein synthesis via mTOR and inhibiting protein degradation via FoxO transcription factors.Strong
- FoxO transcription factors promote muscle atrophy by upregulating ubiquitin ligases (atrogin-1/MAFbx and MuRF1) and autophagy genes.Good
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