Rapamycin improves satellite cells autophagy and muscle regeneration during hypercapnia.

Both CO2 retention, or hypercapnia, and skeletal muscle dysfunction predict higher mortality in critically ill patients. Mechanistically, muscle injury and reduced myogenesis contribute to critical illness myopathy, and while hypercapnia causes muscle wasting, no research has been conducted on hypercapnia-driven dysfunctional myogenesis in vivo. Autophagy flux regulates myogenesis by supporting muscle stem cell -satellite cell- activation, and previous data suggests that hypercapnia inhibits autophagy. We tested whether hypercapnia worsens satellite cell autophagy flux and myogenic potential, and if autophagy induction reverses these deficits. Satellite cell transplantation and lineage tracing experiments showed that hypercapnia undermines satellite cells activation, replication, and myogenic capacity. Bulk and single cell sequencing analyses indicated that hypercapnia disrupts autophagy, senescence, and other satellite cells programs. Autophagy activation was reduced in hypercapnic cultured myoblasts, and autophagy genetic knockdown phenocopied these changes in vitro. Rapamycin stimulation led to AMPK activation and downregulation of the mTOR pathway, which are both associated with accelerated autophagy flux and cell replication. Moreover, hypercapnic mice receiving rapamycin showed improved satellite cells autophagy flux, activation, replication rate, and post transplantation myogenic capacity. In conclusion, we have shown that hypercapnia interferes with satellite cell activation, autophagy flux and myogenesis, and systemic rapamycin administration improved these outcomes.