Cover Letter N°2

Dr. Frank W. Booth
Editor-in-Chief, JBC
Department of Medical Pharmacology and Physiology
University of Missouri, Columbia


Dear Dr. Booth:

We are submitting our work titled “Extracelullar ATP, ADP or adenosine stimulation induces gene expression in rat skeletal myotubes” to the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC). The article is authored by Rodrigo Fernández, Sonia Buvinic and Enrique Jaimovich, all members of the Muscle Cellular Physiology Laboratory from the University of Chile. The study shows that P2Y1 and adenosine receptors activation leads to gene-expression in skeletal myotubes, suggesting their participation in the slow calcium signaling pathway.
Our laboratory has dedicated to identify completely one of the signaling pathways activated during muscle contraction, named slow calcium signaling pathway. Recently, we showed that contracting skeletal myotubes release ATP, and that it leads to gene-expression. However, the receptors involved were unknown. This study was designed to identify what extracellular receptors are activated by ATP. We found that P2Y1 and adenosine receptors activation induced a gene-expression pattern similar to what we had previously shown in response to contraction. These results increase our knowledge about the slow calcium signaling pathway. In the future, we will be able to identify the contraction characteristics that an exercise needs to fulfill to activate this pathway. Then it will be possible to prescribe that exercise to people who specifically need the proteins expressed through the pathway to improve their health. Also, it will be possible to develop drugs that specifically activate the pathway to increase the protein synthesis in those people who cannot exercise.
The article has not been submitted for publication elsewhere, and there are not conflicts of interests.

Sincerely
Rodrigo Fernández

Corresponding author:
Rodrigo Fernández
E-mail: rfernandez@uchile.cl