China 
Africa 
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Basics
Published in Malcolm S. Gordon, Reinhard Blickhan, John O. Dabiri, John J. Videler, Animal Locomotion, 2017
Physiology is a life science that has historically included studies of how animals work as highly organized, integrated collections of physical and chemical processes and systems. Much of physiology is concerned with the internal workings of animals (their internal environments), with humans having been the primary subjects for much of the field. Other animals, however, also have their own physiologies, hence comparative physiology. Physiology in the context of functional interactions of animals with real-world external environments is environmental and ecological physiology. Physiology in the context of long time periods is evolutionary physiology. Behavioral physiology recognizes the inseparable relationships between bodily functions and activities. The often adverse impacts of many human activities on animals have led to the development of conservation physiology. Excellent introductions to many aspects of comparative, ecological, and evolutionary physiology are Martin et al. (2015) and Hill et al. (2016). The most authoritative ongoing online source on all aspects of animal physiology is edited by Pollock et al. (2015).
Carnosine in health and disease
Published in European Journal of Sport Science, 2019
Guilherme Giannini Artioli, Craig Sale, Rebecca Louise Jones
Although identified ∼100 years ago, only in the last 30 years has research identified carnosine as a factor that might exert an influence on health and disease. Evidence is indicative of the ability of the carnosine to influence health and disease status, most clearly in the skeletal muscle and brain at this stage. Many of these developments are, however, recent and numerous important questions remain unanswered, particularly with regard to the precise mechanisms by which carnosine acts and the real impact of carnosine on both health and disease status. More mechanistic approaches, such as knocking-out genes that control carnosine content in tissues (e.g. carnosine synthase and tissue carnosinase), could be used, as well super-expressing them. Alternative approaches to gather further knowledge on the physiological roles of carnosine may comprise comparative physiology studies. Further studies should explore whether these properties are physiologically relevant to cellular and tissue functions and whether they can be translated into therapeutic benefits, especially in diseases where small-scale clinical studies have shown promising results, such as diabetes. Large-scale clinical studies are indeed necessary to provide stronger evidence on the actual clinical benefits of interventions to increase carnosine levels on primary and secondary disease prevention, as well as treatment. Future studies should also look at improving previous clinical research by using large sample sizes, long follow-up periods and measures that link the biological actions of carnosine to their clinical effects. Effective ways to apply the therapeutic effects of increased carnosine levels in different human tissues must also be more clearly established, since the lower bioavailability of carnosine may impose significant limitations to supplementation strategies involving the intact dipeptide. Alternative strategies, such as the use of carnosine-analogues or anserine, both resistant to carnosinases, should also be explored in the future. Whether or not β-alanine supplementation can increase carnosine concentrations in tissues other than skeletal muscle remains unknown and should, therefore, be explored. Finally, increased carnosine in muscle in response to exercise may be a novel long-term adaptation to exercise training that might explain some of the benefits of exercise to health – this novel possibility could also be explored in future studies.