Muscle Biology: The Life History of a Muscle

Muscle Biology: The Life History of a Muscle tells the story of a muscle, from its embryonic origins to its condition at the end of life. This book uses the leg muscle, a tightly knitted group, the quadriceps femoris, which consists of four individual muscles (rectus femoris, vastus lateralis, vastus medialis and vastus intermedius) to provide an in-depth look at skeletal muscle biology. It covers the development of the muscle, muscle pathology, changes in the muscle from training and muscle regeneration.

Muscle Biology: The Life History of a Muscle conveys basic specific information about the various aspects of a muscle’s existence and educates readers to the fact that muscle can be viewed as a continuum of developmental events so that readers get a broad review of the essential ways that muscles adapt to their environment over the course of a lifetime. The book discusses both normal and abnormal changes in the muscle, the mechanisms behind those changes and how to mitigate deleterious changes from disease, ‘normal” aging, and disuse/lack of physical activity. This is a must-have reference for students, researchers and practitioners in need of a comprehensive overview of muscle biology.