bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.29.227710; this version posted July 30, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. Three-Component Model of the Spinal Nerve Branching Pattern, based on the View of the Lateral Somitic Frontier and Experimental Validation Shunsaku Homma1*, Takako Shimada1, Ikuo Wada2, Katsuji Kumaki3, Noboru Sato3, and Hiroyuki Yaginuma1 1 Department of Neuroanatomy and Embryology, 2 Department of Cell Science, Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Fukushima Medical University, 1 Hikarigaoka, Fukushima, 960-1295 JAPAN 3 Division of Gross Anatomy and Morphogenesis, Niigata University Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences, Niigata, 951-8510 JAPAN * Corresponding author: S. Homma,
[email protected]. bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.29.227710; this version posted July 30, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. ABSTRACT One of the decisive questions about human gross anatomy is unmatching the adult branching pattern of the spinal nerve to the embryonic lineages of the peripheral target muscles. The two principal branches in the adult anatomy, the dorsal and ventral rami of the spinal nerve, innervate the intrinsic back muscles (epaxial muscles), as well as the body wall and appendicular muscles (hypaxial muscles), respectively. However, progenitors from the dorsomedial myotome develop into the back and proximal body wall muscles (primaxial muscles) within the sclerotome-derived connective tissue environment.