The p38 pathway regulates Akt both at the protein and transcriptional activation levels during myogenesis

Stac3 Is Required for Myotube Formation and Myogenic Differentiation in Vertebrate Skeletal Muscle

“…Activation of other signaling pathways including p38 have also been implicated in myogenic differentiation. For example, differentiation required increased phosphorylation of p38␣ (22), and p38 activation was required for activation of Akt (28). However, we found no difference between S3RNAi and control cells, indicating that Stac3 is not involved in the p38␣ pathway.…”

The phosphoinositide 3-kinase/Akt pathway is essential for the retinoic acid-induced differentiation of F9 cells

“…This is consistent with the emerging concept that PI3K/Akt signaling has diversified capacities and is apparently capable not only to promote cell growth but also to contribute in cell differentiation. Indeed, recent studies reported that activation of the PI3K/Akt pathway is required for the differentiation of myoblasts (Cabane et al, 2004;Gonzalez et al, 2004;Sarker and Lee, 2004), keratinocytes (Calautti et al, 2005) as well as for the RA-induced differentiation of neuroblastoma cells (Lopez-Carballo et al, 2002), HL60 cells (Ishida et al, 2004), endometrial adenocarcinoma cells (Carter, 2003) and APL cells (Lal et al, 2005). The precise mechanisms through which the PI3K/Akt pathway contributes to cell differentiation have not been determined yet.…”

Engineered Early Embryonic Cardiac Tissue Increases Cardiomyocyte Proliferation by Cyclic Mechanical Stretch via p38-MAP Kinase Phosphorylation

“…41 Some myogenic-specific transcription factor downstream targets of p38MAPK, including GATA-4 and MEF2, have been shown to be activated directly by p38MAPK, [42][43][44] and recent work has shown that the PI3 kinase pathway is involved in activating MEF2. 38,39 Aouadi et al reported that inhibition of p38MAPK activity reduced MEF2C expression and blocked CM lineage induction in embryonic stem cells, suggesting that the p38MAPK effect could be due to MEF2C regulation. 45 We have shown that cyclic mechanical stretch stimulates p38MAPK and results in Akt activation and that inhibition of p38MAPK reduces Akt activation.…”

“…36,37 Akt has also been shown to be a downstream target of p38MAPK that can be directly regulated via gene transcription as well as by protein activation during myogenesis. 38 Previous work has indicated that both Akt 39 and p38MAPK 40 are important for myogenesis. Gude et al have recently shown that Akt acts as a facilitator of cellular proliferation for cardiac progenitor cells and young-committed CMs in the heart and that an increase in Akt correlated not only with replicating cells, but also with increased GATA-4 expression.…”