title: (How) do animals know how much they weigh?
abstract: Animal species varying in size and musculoskeletal design all support and move their body weight. This implies the existence of evolutionarily conserved feedback between sensors that produce quantitative signals encoding body weight and proximate determinants of musculoskeletal designs. Although studies at the level of whole organisms and tissue morphology and function clearly indicate that musculoskeletal designs are constrained by body weight variation, the corollary to this - i.e. that the molecular-level composition of musculoskeletal designs is sensitive to body weight variation - has been the subject of only minimal investigation. The main objective of this Commentary is to briefly summarize the former area of study but, in particular, to highlight the latter hypothesis and the relevance of understanding the mechanisms that control musculoskeletal function at the molecular level. Thus, I present a non-exhaustive overview of the evidence - drawn from different fields of study and different levels of biological organization - for the existence of body weight sensing mechanism(s).
authors.affiliation: Department of Entomology and Biology, Pennsylvania State University, 501 Ag Sci Ind Bldg, University Park, PA 16802, USA rjs360@psu.edu.
authors.forename: Rudolf J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Schilder
mesh_terms: D017398:Alternative Splicing; D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D001835:Body Weight; D053263:Gene Regulatory Networks; D008124:Locomotion; D040542:Mechanotransduction, Cellular; D009132:Muscles / Q000294:innervation / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Alternative splicing; Body weight sensing; Mechanotransduction; Muscle plasticity; Scaling; Tensegrity