Innervation and acetylcholine sensitivity of skeletal muscle cells differentiatedin vitro from chick embryo

✍ Scribed by Masaakira Kano; Yutaka Shimada

• Book ID: 102881133
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1971
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 958 KB
• Volume: 78
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0021-9541
• DOI: 10.1002/jcp.1040780210

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Trypsin‐dissociated myoblasts from leg muscle of 12‐day chick embryos have been cultured in monolayers. After four days the muscle cultures have been confronted with fragments of the spinal cord of six‐day chick embryos.

Electrophysiological and morphological analysis demonstrate that characteristic neuromuscular transmission can develop in these cultures. Electrical stimulation of the cord fragment evokes contractions of innervated muscle fibers, from which end plate potentials and miniature end plate potentials with average frequency around one per second or more can be recorded. D‐tubocurarine (1 μg/ml) suppresses reversibly these synaptic potentials.

Non‐innervated muscle fibers are sensitive to acetylcholine over all their surface, while innervated muscle fibers are sensitive at the regions where structures suggestive of motor end plate (“bulb‐type”) are found.

We can conclude that neuromuscular connections developed in vitro in our experiments are functional in respect of transmission of impulses but also in respect of neurotrophic influences for restriction of chemosensitivity.