It is naturally secreted and helps cells grow and respond to various stress conditions, and prevents muscle atrophy.
Have you ever imagined that you could achieve a healthy, fit physique without exercising or moving any muscle in your body? This is a question that a team of researchers at the University of Michigan in the United States attempted to answer, according to a study recently published in the journal Nature.
The study indicates that the research team discovered a link between a protein known as “ cysteine ” (a protein that is naturally secreted in living cells, helps with cell growth and cellular response to various stress conditions, and is produced by the body and accumulates in muscles after exercise) and a change in muscle structure, a change that perfectly mimics and may even surpass the change caused by exercise.
“Previous studies have discovered the accumulation of cysteine protein in muscles after exercise, and the main goal of the research team was to study the relationship between protein and exercise,” said Maizen Kim, research assistant in molecular and integrative physiology at the University of Michigan, in the press release accompanying the study.
The researchers studied the effect of this protein on at least 680 fruit flies, divided into two groups. Their first step was to encourage one group of flies to exercise, exploiting the flies’ natural instinct to escape from test tubes to motivate them to do so. They also developed an exercise device suitable for the flies and trained two groups of flies: one with normal abilities and the other lacking the ability to produce cysteine .
The study’s lead researcher, John Lee, said: “Flies can run on the exercise machine and fly for about six hours, and the group of normal flies showed improvement during that time. The other group of flies did not show any improvement with the exercise performance.”
The team then moved to the next step, increasing the number of genes responsible for protein production using gene expression technology. This allowed them to increase cysteine protein levels in the muscle cells of another group of flies. The astonishing results showed that this group exhibited capabilities exceeding those achieved through exercise alone, suggesting that cysteine protein is closely linked to high physical fitness and can burn fat.
These were not all the benefits of Cistrin; the researchers found – by tracking the experimental mice included in the study – that “mice lacking the Cistrin protein showed a deficiency in oxygenation, respiration, and fat-burning ratios that are always associated with effective training.”
He added in his comments, “We propose that cysteine is a regulator of these vital processes by stimulating or inhibiting certain metabolic pathways.” I contacted another researcher at Pompeu Fabra University to conduct further research demonstrating that cysteine helps prevent muscle atrophy that can occur in limbs that remain in casts for extended periods. Cysteine may even be sufficient to improve walking ability.
For her part, Kim believes that scientists don’t know how cysteine is produced in the human body. But research into this hypothesis could offer hope to those who cannot exercise.
He tells me: “The study took about ten years. We are now looking at smaller compounds, and we may soon see cysteine supplements commercially available. It may be difficult to pinpoint a date for when the protein will be available for commercial use, but not for too long.”
0 Comments