Modulation Of Balance Research Articles

The interplay between heated environment and active standing test on cardiovascular autonomic control in healthy individuals

Objective. To investigate the interplay between active standing and heat stress on cardiovascular autonomic modulation in healthy individuals. Approach. Blood pressure (BP) and ECG were continuously recorded during 30 min in supine (SUP) and 6 min in orthostatic position (ORT) under thermal reference (TC; ∼24 °C) or heated environment (HOT; ∼36 °C) conditions, in a randomized order. All data collection was performed during the winter and spring seasons when typical outdoor temperatures are ∼23 °C. Spectral analysis was employed by the autoregressive model of R–R and systolic blood pressure (SBP) time series and defined, within each band, in low (LF, 0.04 to 0.15 Hz) and high (0.15–0.40 Hz) frequencies. The indices of cardiac sympathetic (LF) and cardiac parasympathetic (HF) were normalized (nu) dividing each band power by the total power subtracted the very-low component (<0.04 Hz), obtaining the cardiac autonomic balance (LF/HF) modulation. The gain of the relationship between SBP and R–R variabilities within the LF band was utilized for analysis of spontaneous baroreflex sensitivity (alpha index; αLF). Nonlinear analysis was employed through symbolic dynamics of R–R, which provided the percentage of sequences of three heart periods without changes in R–R interval (0V%; cardiac sympathetic modulation) and two significant variations (2UV% and 2LV%; cardiac vagal modulation). Main results. HOT increased 0V% and HR, and decreased αLF and 2UV% during SUP compared to TC. During ORT, HOT provokes a greater increment on HR, LF/HF and 0V%, indexes compared to ORT under TC. Significance. At rest, heat stress influences both autonomic branches, increasing sympathetic and decreasing vagal modulation and spontaneous baroreflex sensitivity. The augmented HR during active standing under heat stress seems to be mediated by a greater increment in cardiac sympathetic modulation, showing an interplay between gravitational and thermal stimulus.

Weight-reducing, lipid-lowering and antidiabetic activities of a novel arginine vasopressin analogue acting at the V1a and V1b receptors in high-fat-fed mice.

To assess the beneficial metabolic effects of the nonapeptide hormone, arginine vasopressin (AVP), on metabolism. We exchanged amino acids at position 3 and 8 of AVP, namely phenylalanine and arginine, with those of oxytocin, to generate novel analogues with altered receptor selectivity. Secondary modification by N-terminal acetylation was used to impart stability to circulating endopeptidases. Analogues were screened for degradation, bioactivity in rodent/human clonal beta cells and primary murine islets, together with evaluation of receptor activation profile. Analogue Ac3IV, which lacked effects at the V2 receptors responsible for modulation of fluid balance, was selected as the lead compound for assessment of antidiabetic efficacy in high-fat-fed mice. Twice-daily administration of Ac3IV, or the gold standard control exendin-4, for 22 days, reduced energy intake as well as body weight and fat content. Both interventions decreased circulating glucose levels, enhanced insulin sensitivity, and substantially improved glucose tolerance and related insulin secretion in response to an intraperitoneal or oral glucose challenge. The peptides decreased total- and increased HDL-cholesterol, but only Ac3IV decreased LDL-cholesterol, triglyceride and non-fasting glucagon concentrations. Elevations of islet and beta-cell areas were partially reversed, accompanied by suppressed islet cell proliferation, decreased beta-cell apoptosis and, in the case of exendin-4, also decreased alpha-cell apoptosis. AVP-based therapies that exclusively target V1a and V1b receptors may have significant therapeutic potential for the treatment of obesity and related diabetes, and merit further clinical exploration.

Gut Microbiota: The Missing Link Between Helicobacter pylori Infection and Metabolic Disorders?

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) is a gram-negative bacterium that infects approximately 4.4 billion individuals worldwide. Although the majority of infected individuals remain asymptomatic, this bacterium colonizes the gastric mucosa causing the development of various clinical conditions as peptic ulcers, chronic gastritis and gastric adenocarcinomas and mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue lymphomas, but complications are not limited to gastric ones. Extradigestive pathologies, including metabolic disturbances such as diabetes, obesity and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, have also been associated with H. pylori infection. However, the underlying mechanisms connecting H. pylori with extragastric metabolic diseases needs to be clarified. Notably, the latest studies on the topic have confirmed that H. pylori infection modulates gut microbiota in humans. Damage in the gut bacterial community (dysbiosis) has been widely related to metabolic dysregulation by affecting adiposity, host energy balance, carbohydrate metabolism, and hormonal modulation, among others. Taking into account that Type 2 diabetic patients are more prone to be H. pylori positive, gut microbiota emerges as putative key factor responsible for this interaction. In this regard, the therapy of choice for H. pylori eradication, based on proton pump inhibitor combined with two or more antibiotics, also alters gut microbiota composition, but consequences on metabolic health of the patients has been scarcely explored. Recent studies from our group showed that, despite decreasing gut bacterial diversity, conventional H. pylori eradication therapy is related to positive changes in glucose and lipid profiles. The mechanistic insights explaining these effects should also be addressed in future research. This review will deal with the role of gut microbiota as the linking factor between H. pylori infection and metabolic diseases, and discussed the impact that gut bacterial modulation by H. pylori eradication treatment can also have in host’s metabolism. For this purpose, new evidence from the latest human studies published in more recent years will be analyzed.

Power balance modulation strategy for hybrid cascaded H-bridge multi-level inverter

Under the traditional hybrid modulation strategy, the output powers of the hybrid cascaded H-bridge inverter are not balanced between the cascaded units. With a hybrid cascaded H-bridge 13-level inverter with a DC side voltage ratio of 1:1:1:3 (referred to as III-inverter in the paper) as the research object, a hybrid modulation power equalization strategy based on carrier rotation is proposed. Under the control of which, the output voltage of inverters is formed by superposition of multiple basic voltage waveforms. Firstly, the hybrid modulation strategy is adopted to modulate the inverter so that the high- and low-voltage units, respectively, operate in the low-frequency and high-frequency states. Then, the pulse sequence within the 3/2 output voltage cycle is made to circulate among all the cascaded units by carrier rotation. Finally, the output voltage of each cascaded units is made to contain all the basic voltage waveforms, thus implementing the output power balance between all the cascaded units. Based on simulation and experiment, the effectiveness of the strategy is verified, and it is shown that under the control of this power balance modulation strategy, the output voltage waveform quality of the inverter is high, there is no current backflow, and the output power can be balanced within 3/2 cycles.

Design of a Modular Battery Management System for Electric Motorcycle

This paper proposes a modular battery management system for an electric motorcycle. The system not only can accurately measure battery voltage, charging current, discharging current, and temperature but also can transmit the data to the mixed-signal processor for battery module monitoring. Moreover, the system can control the battery balancing circuit and battery protection switch to protect the battery module charging and discharging process safety. The modular battery management system is mainly composed of a mixed-signal processor, voltage measurement, current measurement, temperature measurement, battery balancing, and protection switch module. The testing results show that the errors between the voltage value measured by the voltage measurement module and the actual value are less than 0.5%, about 1% under the conditions of different charging and discharging currents of 9 A and 18 A for the current measuring module, less than 1% for the temperature measurement module; and the battery balancing in the battery management system during the charging process. When the module is charged at 4.5 A for about 805 s, each cell of the battery has reached the balancing state. Finally, the testing results validate that the modular battery management system proposed in this paper can effectively manage the battery balancing of each cell in the battery module, battery module overcharge, over-discharge, temperature protection, and control.

Balanced Functional Module Detection in genomic data.

High-dimensional genomic data can be analyzed to understand the effects of variables on a target variable such as a clinical outcome. For understanding the underlying biological mechanism affecting the target, it is important to discover the complete set of relevant variables. Thus variable selection is a primary goal, which differs from a prediction criterion. Of special interest are functional modules, cooperating sets of variables affecting the target which can be characterized by a graph. In applications such as social networks, the concept of balance in undirected signed graphs characterizes the consistency of associations within the network. This property requires that the module variables have a joint effect on the target outcome with no internal conflict, an efficiency that may be applied to biological networks. In this paper, we model genomic variables in signed undirected graphs for applications where the set of predictor variables influences an outcome. Consequences of the balance property are exploited to implement a new module discovery algorithm, balanced Functional Module Detection (bFMD), which selects a subset of variables from high-dimensional data that compose a balanced functional module. Our bFMD algorithm performed favorably in simulations as compared to other module detection methods. Additionally, bFMD detected interpretable results in an application using RNA-seq data obtained from subjects with Uterine Corpus Endometrial Carcinoma using the percentage of tumor invasion as the outcome of interest. The variables selected by bFMD have improved interpretability due to the logical consistency afforded by the balance property. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics Advances online.

Compact Wideband Coplanar Stripline-to-Microstrip Line Transition Using a Bended Structure on a Two-Layered Substrate

A design of a compact coplanar strip (CPS)-to-microstrip line (MSL) transition using a bended structure on a two-layered substrate is presented. The proposed transition consists of a CPS taper and a bended CPS-to-MSL transition on a two-layered substrate. The CPS taper is formed on the lower substrate with low permittivity (εr = 3.38), and the bended CPS-to-MSL transition is formed on the upper substrate with high permittivity (εr= 10.2). The proposed transition is designed with analytical formulas obtained by applying EM-based conformal mapping without parametric tuning trials. The conductor shape of the bended CPS-to-MSL transition is adjusted to form an optimal Klopfenstein impedance taper. The proposed CPS-to-MSL transition optimally connects between a high impedance CPS line (~160 Ω) and a 50 Ω MSL, which typically results in a long transition length for ultra-wideband performance. The implemented transition bended in a sinusoid shape on the two-layered substrate provides good performance from 2 GHz to 17 GHz with the maximum 2 dB insertion loss per transition, and the horizontal length of the bended transition is reduced to 42.9% of the straight transition length. This bended transition is developed for use in mm-wave balanced antenna/detector feeds but can be applied to a variety of wideband balanced circuit modules, where compact circuit size is critical.

Tailored modulation of the inflammatory balance in COVID-19 patients admitted to the ICU?\u2014a viewpoint

A growing consensus seems to be emerging that dexamethasone is a crucial component in the treatment of COVID-19-associated oxygen-dependent respiratory failure. Although dexamethasone has an undeniably beneficial effect on the inflammatory response in a subgroup of patients, the potential negative effects of corticosteroids must also be considered. In view of these negative effects, we argue that a one-size-fits-all dexamethasone approach may be potentially harmful in specific subsets of patients with COVID-19-associated ARDS. We propose a different individually tailored treatment strategy based on the patient’s inflammatory response.

Roles of Nrf2 in Gastric Cancer: Targeting for Therapeutic Strategies.

Nuclear Factor Erythroid 2-Related Factor 2 (Nrf2) is a specific transcription factor with potent effects on the regulation of antioxidant gene expression that modulates cell hemostasis under various conditions in tissues. However, the effects of Nrf2 on gastric cancer (GC) are not fully elucidated and understood. Evidence suggests that uncontrolled Nrf2 expression and activation has been observed more frequently in malignant tumors, including GC cells, which is then associated with increased antioxidant capacity, chemoresistance, and poor clinical prognosis. Moreover, Nrf2 inhibitors and the associated modulation of tumor cell redox balance have shown that Nrf2 also has beneficial effects on the therapy of various cancers, including GC. Based on previous findings on the important role of Nrf2 in GC therapy, it is of great interest to scientists in basic and clinical tumor research that Nrf2 can be active as both an oncogene and a tumor suppressor depending on different background situations.

Balanced-RetinaNet: solving the imbalanced problems in object detection

Compared with the improvement of model structure in the field of object detection, the imbalanced problems in the training process have received less attention, but it is also one of the main reasons affecting its performance. We mainly analyze the imbalanced problems that occur in different stages of the network training process and propose a more balanced network called Balanced-RetinaNet, which has three improvements. First, in the feature extraction stage, a multi-scale feature balanced module is proposed to settle the problem in terms of imbalanced feature distribution, that is, the high-level feature lacks spatial information and while the low-level feature lacks semantic information; then, in the object regression stage, an interval-based regression loss is proposed to solve the problem of inaccurate localization caused by the different contributions of different samples to the regression loss; finally, in the object classification stage, an adaptive focal loss is proposed to solve the problem of classification errors caused by the loss of a large number of negative samples overwhelming the overall classification loss. Experiments have proved that by solving the imbalanced problems, the detection accuracy has been significantly improved on the MS COCO dataset.

Nanosilver fluoride as a caries arresting agent: A narrative review

Dental caries is the most prevalent oral disease that continues to affect almost every country in the world. The contemporary management of dental caries focuses on non-restorative, non-invasive, and micro-invasive treatment approaches that arrest or reverse the caries process at a lesion level and reduce the loss of sound tooth structure. One of these approaches is the employment of caries arresting agents that possess antibacterial and remineralizing properties. Silver diamine fluoride (SDF) has drawn significant attention as an efficient caries arresting agent in children and adults. The major limitation with the use of SDF is the dark black staining of the carious tissue that compromises the esthetics. Silver ions are known for their antimicrobial effects, and silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) have the added advantage that it increases the surface area for exposure to the microbes. Literature reports that AgNPs have antimicrobial potential against predominant cariogenic flora. It has led to the development of nanosilver fluoride (NSF), a new colloid based on AgNPs, chitosan, and fluoride. It has shown to overcome the clinical limitations of SDF as it does not cause carious lesion staining. However, the current scientific literature lacks a comprehensive review of the benefits of using NSF for caries prevention and arrest. Thus, the purpose of this paper was to review the studies and clinical trials on NSF as a caries arresting agent, including antibacterial actions and modulation of the demineralization-remineralization balance.

Combinatorics of faithfully balanced modules

We study and classify faithfully balanced modules for the algebra of triangular n by n matrices and more generally for Nakayama algebras. The theory extends known results about tilting modules, which are classified by binary trees, and counted with the Catalan numbers. The number of faithfully balanced modules is a 2-factorial number. Among them are n! modules with n indecomposable summands, which can be classified by interleaved binary trees or by increasing binary trees.

A twice boost nine‐level switched‐capacitor multilevel (2B‐9L‐SCMLI) inverter with self‐voltage balancing capability

SummaryThe research on the multilevel inverter structures has been focused on reducing the number of voltage sources and the components while obtaining voltage boosting in the output voltage. A lesser number of components would ensure lesser cost while higher boosting ability increases its application potential. Based on these features, the paper presents a new topology for switched‐capacitor multi‐level inverter (SCMLI), which can produce an output voltage waveform of nine levels with a voltage boosting of twice the input voltage employing a single dc voltage source, three capacitors, and 11 power switches. The operation of switches, capacitors with a self‐charge balancing modulation scheme, and a voltage source for producing nine‐level boosted output voltage make this topology useful, and it is capable of supplying different types of load with efficiency above 97%. The simulation results and the hardware results are provided to verify the satisfactory operation of the proposed topology.

Low Doses of Resveratrol Protect Human Granulosa Cells from Induced-Oxidative Stress.

Resveratrol is a phytoalexin present in plant-derived foods, including grape’s skin, cocoa, and peanuts. Evidence suggests that it has beneficial effects on human health because of its antioxidant properties. However, there is limited knowledge about the part played by resveratrol in ovarian function. In this paper, the influence of resveratrol on granulosa cells (GC) was evaluated. In addition to being the main estradiol producers, GC are in direct contact with the oocyte, playing a fundamental role in its growth and development. The cell line COV434 and human granulosa cells (hGC), obtained from women undergoing assisted reproductive technology (ART), were used. GC were treated with resveratrol (0.001–20 μM) at different times (24–72 h). Low concentrations of this compound suggest a protective role, as they tend to reduce ROS/RNS formation after inducement of stress. On the contrary, high concentrations of resveratrol affect GC viability and steroidogenic function. As it may act as a direct modulator of GC oxidative balance, this work may help to clarify the impact of resveratrol on GC and the usefulness of this antioxidant as adjunct to infertility treatments.

Regulation of Metabolic Health by an “Olfactory-Hypothalamic Axis” and Its Possible Implications for the Development of Therapeutic Approaches for Obesity and T2D

The olfactory system is responsible for the reception, integration and interpretation of odors. However, in the last years, it has been discovered that the olfactory perception of food can rapidly modulate the activity of hypothalamic neurons involved in the regulation of energy balance. Conversely, the hormonal signals derived from changes in the metabolic status of the body can also change the sensitivity of the olfactory system, suggesting that the bidirectional relationship established between the olfactory and the hypothalamic systems is key for the maintenance of metabolic homeostasis. In the first part of this review, we describe the possible mechanisms and anatomical pathways involved in the modulation of energy balance regulated by the olfactory system. Hence, we propose a model to explain its implication in the maintenance of the metabolic homeostasis of the organism. In the second part, we discuss how the olfactory system could be involved in the development of metabolic diseases such as obesity and type two diabetes and, finally, we propose the use of intranasal therapies aimed to regulate and improve the activity of the olfactory system that in turn will be able to control the neuronal activity of hypothalamic centers to prevent or ameliorate metabolic diseases.

Particulate aggregation through a modulated annular one-dimensional acoustic field at resonant frequencies

The visualization and analysis of a novel acoustic-particulate system is the objective of this study. The system is composed of rice-husk fired smoke particulates (36.7nm–840μm) and one annular resonant circular-tube waveguide contrarily coupled with two sound sources. The collective interaction behavior process of smoke particulates in an inhomogeneous acoustic field is displayed during an experiment and a simulation. The result shows that the aggregation and fragmentation of particles under a change in resonant frequencies and sound pressure amplitude is extremely complex. This complex process consists of dynamically tuning the particle characteristics to attain stripes shaped like thin-films/umbrellas and clusters with volume-change/fragmentation. The balanced modulation of the acoustic radiation force and secondary radiation force to alter the particle characteristics (size and stack density) is verified to be the control mechanism of the particle system. The intermediate variable of the process control is the acoustic contrast factor (Ф) related to the physical characteristics of the growing particulates. The value plus-minus alternation of Ф results in different particulate processes. This study can enhance the application of aerodynamic acoustic-particulate-fluid systems for environment protection, energy fuel conversion, and industrial production.

Energy Efficient Resource Migration Based Load Balance Mechanism for High Traffic Applications IoT

The biggest challenge for the network service providers is the day to day advancement of technologies which makes them difficult to manage the traditional networks. This day to day advancement has worked as a motivation to vendors for developing, deploying and migrating their services, installments of new hardware, trained people and up gradation of infrastructure which involves a huge cost and time. These frequent changes demand a new network architecture which supports future technologies and solves all these issues named as the proposal of networks defined by software. A large amount of data is being generated and through the internet, we interact with the world using our smart devices such as tablets, sensors, and smartphones using the concepts of Internet of Things (IoT). Along with continuous growth and development, there is a continuous heterogenous and ever-increasing demands of services. This leads to a cause of emerging challenge of load balancing of networks for meeting up with highly demanding requirements (e.g., high performance, lower latency, high throughput, and high availability) of IoT and 5G network applications. For meeting up highly increasing demands, various proposal of load balancing techniques comes forward, in which highly dedicated balancers of loads are being required for ever service in some of them, or for every new service, manual recognition of device is required. In the conventional network, on the basis of the local information in the network, load balancing is being established. However, the production of more optimized load balancers and a global view for the network is being contained by SDN controllers. So, these well-known techniques are quite time-consuming, expensive and impractical as well as service types aren’t being considered by various existing load balancing schemes. Through this paper, researchers focus on an SDN based load balancing (SBLB) service, in which minimized response time and maximized resource utilization are being considered for the user on cloud servers. The proposed scheme is being constituted by an application module which runs along with a SDN controller and server pools that connect to the controller through SDN enabled switches. The application module contains a dynamic load balancing module, a monitoring module and a service classification module. All messages are being handled in real time and host pool are being maintained by the Controller. The performance of the proposed scheme has been validated by experimental results. Through various experiments, results are being concluded that usage of SBLB results in significant decrease in average response and reply time.

New Methods and Strategies in the Synthesis of Terpenoid Natural Products.

Indoloterpenoids of the paxilline type belong to a large family of secondary metabolites that exhibit unique molecular architectures and a diverse set of biological activities. More than 100 congeners identified to date share a common structural motif that contains an indole moiety fused to a rearranged diterpenoid fragment. The representative physiological and cellular effects attributed to this family of natural products include neurological and insecticidal activities, modulation of lipid balance, and inhibition of mitosis. The uniting polycyclic motif combined with the diversity of individual structural features of paxilline indoloterpenoids and the broad scope of their biological activities have fascinated organic chemists for the past four decades and have led to the development of numerous syntheses. In this Account, we describe our contributions to this field and how they in turn shape new directions that are developing in our laboratory.We begin with the discussion of our strategy for the synthesis of the shared indoloterpenoid core. To address stereochemical challenges encountered in earlier reports, we planned to leverage a suitably substituted cyclopentanone in a polycyclization to form the desired trans-decalin motif. This polycyclization relied on a radical-polar crossover cascade initiated by hydrogen atom transfer. The original process exhibited poor diastereoselectivity, but we discovered an efficient solution to this problem that took advantage of intramolecular tethering effects, culminating in short synthesis of emindole SB. During these studies, we also identified indium-mediated alkenylation of silyl enol ethers with alkynes as a suitable method for the synthesis of highly substituted β,γ-unsaturated ketones that was critical to achieving brevity of our route. We subsequently developed a catalytic version of this transformation that allowed for a formal bimolecular ene reaction that exhibited unusual and potentially useful selectivity in construction of quaternary centers.To test the scope and limitations of our approach to paxilline indoloterpenoids and identify potential improvements, we developed a synthesis of the more complex congener nodulisporic acid C. The convergent assembly of this natural product was enabled by identification of new elements of stereocontrol in the radical-polar crossover polycyclization en route to the polycyclic terpenoid motif and development of a highly diastereoselective enyne cycloisomerization to access the indenopyran motif and a ketone arylation protocol to unite the two complex fragments.In subsequent studies, we expanded the radical-polar crossover cascade underlying our approach to paxilline indoloterpenoids to a bimolecular setting, which allowed for annulation of two unsaturated carbonyl components to produce functionalized cyclohexanes. This transformation is particularly well suited for installation of fully substituted carbons and can be complementary to the venerable Diels-Alder reaction. The utility of the new annulation was tested in the synthesis of forskolin, allowing for rapid construction of the complex polycyclic motif in this densely functionalized labdane diterpenoid.Over the past five years, our initial forays into the synthesis of paxilline indoloterpenoids have grown into a program that incorporates development of new synthetic methods and pursues artificial assembly of terpenoid natural products from several different families. We are encouraged by the increasing diversity of structural motifs made accessible by application of this chemistry and continue to discover new aspects of the underlying reactivity.

Implementation and assessment of a carbonate system model (Eco3M-CarbOx v1.1) in a highly dynamic Mediterranean coastal site (Bay of Marseille, France)

Abstract. A carbonate chemistry balance module was implemented into a biogeochemical model of the planktonic food web. The model, named Eco3M-CarbOx, includes 22 state variables that are dispatched into 5 compartments: phytoplankton, heterotrophic bacteria, detrital particulate organic matter, labile dissolved organic, and inorganic matter. This model is applied to and evaluated in the Bay of Marseille (BoM, France), which is a coastal zone impacted by the urbanized and industrialized Aix–Marseille Metropolis, and subject to significant increases in anthropogenic emissions of CO2. The model was evaluated over the year 2017, for which in situ data of the carbonate system are available in the study site. The biogeochemical state variables of the model only change with time, to represent the time evolution of a sea surface water cell in response to the implemented realistic forcing conditions. The model correctly simulates the value ranges and seasonal dynamics of most of the variables of the carbonate system except for the total alkalinity. Several numerical experiments were conducted to test the response of carbonate system to (i) a seawater temperature increase, (ii) wind events, (iii) Rhône River plume intrusions, and (iv) different levels of atmospheric CO2 contents. This set of numerical experiments shows that the Eco3M-CarbOx model provides expected responses in the alteration of the marine carbonate balance regarding each of the considered perturbation. When the seawater temperature changes quickly, the behavior of the BoM waters alters within a few days from a source of CO2 to the atmosphere to a sink into the ocean. Moreover, the higher the wind speed is, the higher the air–sea CO2 gas exchange fluxes are. The river intrusions with nitrate supplies lead to a decrease in the pCO2 value, favoring the conditions of a sink for atmospheric CO2 into the BoM. A scenario of high atmospheric concentrations of CO2 also favors the conditions of a sink for atmospheric CO2 into the waters of the BoM. Thus the model results suggest that external forcings have an important impact on the carbonate equilibrium in this coastal area.

Ubiquitin Ligases at the Heart of Skeletal Muscle Atrophy Control.

Skeletal muscle loss is a detrimental side-effect of numerous chronic diseases that dramatically increases mortality and morbidity. The alteration of protein homeostasis is generally due to increased protein breakdown while, protein synthesis may also be down-regulated. The ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS) is a master regulator of skeletal muscle that impacts muscle contractile properties and metabolism through multiple levers like signaling pathways, contractile apparatus degradation, etc. Among the different actors of the UPS, the E3 ubiquitin ligases specifically target key proteins for either degradation or activity modulation, thus controlling both pro-anabolic or pro-catabolic factors. The atrogenes MuRF1/TRIM63 and MAFbx/Atrogin-1 encode for key E3 ligases that target contractile proteins and key actors of protein synthesis respectively. However, several other E3 ligases are involved upstream in the atrophy program, from signal transduction control to modulation of energy balance. Controlling E3 ligases activity is thus a tempting approach for preserving muscle mass. While indirect modulation of E3 ligases may prove beneficial in some situations of muscle atrophy, some drugs directly inhibiting their activity have started to appear. This review summarizes the main signaling pathways involved in muscle atrophy and the E3 ligases implicated, but also the molecules potentially usable for future therapies.