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Cells in the tendon and muscle parts of the gel line up along ridges but don't form proper fibers even after three weeks.
Descriptive
When stained with alizarin red, the bone and muscle parts of the gel model show calcium deposits, which is typical for mineralized tissues.
A special container with three sections keeps different liquids separate for a day but still lets cells talk to each other across sections.
In this gel model, the number of cells decreases for two weeks then levels off, while their energy use increases for a week then stabilizes after three weeks.
Quantitative
When grown together in a gel model, bone cells (MG-63) make osteonectin, tendon cells (HDF) make tenomodulin, and muscle cells (Sket.4U) make α-SMA, and these markers are still present after two weeks.
A gel made from collagen and agarose with different amounts of hydroxyapatite can be made to have different stiffness levels: soft like muscle (20 kPa), medium like tendon (140 kPa), and stiff like bone (240 kPa).
After swimming, rats that drank whey protein had more leucine inside their muscles than those drinking other proteins for up to 1.5 hours after eating.
After swimming, rats that drank whey protein had more leucine in their blood than those drinking other proteins at 1 and 1.5 hours after eating.
When rats ate more milk protein up to a certain amount, their muscle building increased, but eating even more didn't help further.
When measuring overall muscle building over several hours, milk protein showed the highest total effect, then caseinate, whey, and soy, but the numbers weren't statistically tested.
When rats swam for two hours and consumed dairy proteins (whey, milk, or caseinate), their muscle building rates were higher than those eating soy protein at specific times after eating.
When rats swam for two hours and then consumed caseinate, their muscle building rate peaked at 120 minutes with a value of 7.85% per day.
When rats swam for two hours and then consumed milk protein, their muscle building rate peaked at 90 minutes with a value of 8.34% per day.
When rats swam for two hours and then consumed whey protein, their muscle building rate peaked at 60 minutes with a value of 7.76% per day.
Experienced weightlifters lose over half their protein retention per body weight when delaying protein and carb intake after a workout, but beginners aren't affected much by the timing.
For experienced lifters, eating protein and carbs right after a workout leads to better protein retention per pound of body weight than waiting six hours, but this isn't the case for beginners.
Experienced weightlifters retain less protein in their bodies after workouts compared to beginners, regardless of when they eat protein and carbs.
For men new to weightlifting, eating protein and carbs right after a workout or waiting six hours doesn't change protein retention in the body.
For men who regularly lift weights, eating protein and carbs right after working out leads to better protein retention in the body compared to waiting six hours.
Causal
Neither type of whey protein affected insulin levels in rats' blood an hour after exercise, regardless of dose.
Both types of whey protein at a higher dose activated the mTOR pathway in rats' muscles compared to no protein.
A larger dose of regular whey protein activated a key muscle-building pathway more than hydrolyzed whey protein or no protein in rats.
When rats ate a larger dose of regular whey protein, their blood had more leucine than when they ate the same amount of hydrolyzed whey protein an hour later.
Correlational
For rats, the best time for muscle protein building after eating regular whey protein is about an hour later.