Grant: Operating Grant

Diabetes is a disease that causes blood sugar to be higher than normal and is a major public health issue in Canada. In fact, patients that have really high levels of blood sugar often develop heart problems or muscle weakness in their legs. Researchers have learned that these problems occur because at least two different proteins that move calcium (which are called sarcoplasmic reticulum proteins) within the heart and leg muscles are damaged by diabetes. Researchers have also learned that exercise training for 60 minutes per day, five days a week can protect these proteins so they are not damaged by diabetes, which helps to prevent heart problems and muscle weakness. However, researchers still do not understand how exercise causes this health benefit. Therefore, our research proposal will try to discover the biological machinery that are turned on by exercise in order to protect sarcoplasmic reticulum proteins within the heart and leg muscles of diabetic mice. We plan to use mice in our experiments because they develop diabetes in a way that is similar to humans. Also, by using mice we will be able to find out if problems with an energy sensing protein, which is called AMPK, are responsible for causing the damage to sarcoplasmic reticulum proteins in diabetes. Mice also appear to enjoy running, which will allow us to see if exercise can turn on AMPK and prevent sarcoplasmic reticulum proteins from being damaged by diabetes. In fact, this study is really interesting because it will be the first to find out if the AMPK protein controls the amount of damage that diabetes causes to sarcoplasmic reticulum proteins. This information may help researchers to understand why exercise is able to improve the health of diabetic patients. Someday, this information may also help researchers to develop new drugs that can prevent heart problems and muscle weakness in diabetic patients.