Multimodal cell atlas of the ageing human skeletal muscle

Abstract Muscle atrophy and functional decline (sarcopenia) are common manifestations of frailty and are critical contributors to morbidity and mortality in older people 1 . Deciphering the molecular mechanisms underlying sarcopenia has major implications for understanding human ageing 2 . Yet, progress has been slow, partly due to the difficulties of characterizing skeletal muscle niche heterogeneity (whereby myofibres are the most abundant) and obtaining well-characterized human samples 3,4 . Here we generate a single-cell/single-nucleus transcriptomic and chromatin accessibility map of human limb skeletal muscles encompassing over 387,000 cells/nuclei from individuals aged 15 to 99 years with distinct…