Skip to main content
  • Poster presentation
  • Open access
  • Published:

Phosphatidic acid feeding increases muscle protein synthesis and select mTORC1 pathway signaling mediators in rodent skeletal muscle

Background

Human and cell culture studies have demonstrated that phosphatidic acid (PA) can increase muscle mass and anabolic signaling, respectively. However, no in vivo evidence to date has examined whether PA can increase intramuscular anabolic signaling in vivo. The purpose of this study was to examine – a) if PA feeding acutely increases post-prandial muscle protein synthesis (MPS) and anabolic signaling markers; and b) if PA can enhance the post-prandial anabolic effects of whey protein concentrate (WPC).

Methods

Male Wistar rats (~250 g) were fasted overnight (~18 h) and fed either: a) 1 ml water (n = 14), b) 28 mg PA (eq. to 1.5 g human dose; n = 8), c) 197 mg WPC (eq. to 10 g human dose; n = 8), or d) PA+WPC (n = 8). 2.5 h post-feeding rats were injected with 5.44 mg puromycin diHCl for MPS assessment via SUnSET and 3 hours post-feeding rats were euthanized and mixed gastrocnemius muscles were removed for immunoblotting analyses. The treatment of the animals in this study adhered to commonly accepted ethics guidelines.

Results

Compared to water-fed rats, PA feeding caused an elevation in numerous Akt-mTOR markers and, in some instances, PA+WPC exhibted a greater increase in Akt-mTOR signaling markers (Erk1/2 Thr202/Tyr204, Bad Ser112, p70s6k Thr389). However, compared to water-fed rats, the PA, WPC, and PA+WPC groups exhibited greater MPS responses with no differences existing between conditions.

Conclusion

This is the first in vivo data demonstrating that PA feeding increases MPS. More post-prandial time course data with resistance exercise is needed to better elucidate how PA feeding affects muscle anabolism.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael D Roberts.

Rights and permissions

Open Access  This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Mobley, C.B., Fox, C.D., Pascoe, C. et al. Phosphatidic acid feeding increases muscle protein synthesis and select mTORC1 pathway signaling mediators in rodent skeletal muscle. J Int Soc Sports Nutr 11 (Suppl 1), P50 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1186/1550-2783-11-S1-P50

Download citation

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1550-2783-11-S1-P50

Keywords