- Molendijk, Jeffrey;
- Blazev, Ronnie;
- Mills, Richard J;
- Ng, Yaan-Kit;
- Watt, Kevin I;
- Chau, Daryn;
- Gregorevic, Paul;
- Crouch, Peter J;
- Hilton, James BW;
- Lisowski, Leszek;
- Zhang, Peixiang;
- Reue, Karen;
- Lusis, Aldons J;
- Hudson, James E;
- James, David E;
- Seldin, Marcus M;
- Parker, Benjamin L
Improving muscle function has great potential to improve the quality of life. To identify novel regulators of skeletal muscle metabolism and function, we performed a proteomic analysis of gastrocnemius muscle from 73 genetically distinct inbred mouse strains, and integrated the data with previously acquired genomics and >300 molecular/phenotypic traits via quantitative trait loci mapping and correlation network analysis. These data identified thousands of associations between protein abundance and phenotypes and can be accessed online (https://muscle.coffeeprot.com/) to identify regulators of muscle function. We used this resource to prioritize targets for a functional genomic screen in human bioengineered skeletal muscle. This identified several negative regulators of muscle function including UFC1, an E2 ligase for protein UFMylation. We show UFMylation is up-regulated in a mouse model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a disease that involves muscle atrophy. Furthermore, in vivo knockdown of UFMylation increased contraction force, implicating its role as a negative regulator of skeletal muscle function.