Transient and Chronic Neonatal Denervation of Murine Muscle: a Procedure to Modify the Phenotypic Expression of Muscular Dystrophy
The Journal of Neuroscience, July 1987, 7(7): 2145-2152 Transient and Chronic Neonatal Denervation of Murine Muscle: A Procedure to Modify the Phenotypic Expression of Muscular Dystrophy Maria C. Moschella and Marcia Ontell Department of Neurobiology, Anatomy and Cell Science, University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15261 The extensor digitorum longus muscles of 14-d-old normal logical studies, the etiology of the diseasehas not been deter- (129 ReJ + +) and dystrophic (129 ReJ dy/dy) mice were mined. Initially, the diseasewas described as a primary my- denervated by cutting the sciatic nerve. One denervation opathy (Michelson et al., 1955; Banker and Denny-Brown, 1959; protocol was designed to inhibit reinnervation of the shank Banker, 1967; Cosmos et al., 1973); however, amyelinization muscles, the other to promote reinnervation. Chronically de- of the ventral roots of the spinal nerves in the lumbar region nervated muscles (muscles that remained denervated for (Bray and Aguayo, 1975; Jaros and Bradley, 1978) abnormal- 100 d after nerve section) exhibited marked atrophy, but the ities at the motor endplate region (Banker et al., 1979) and number of myofibers in these muscles (1066 f 46 and 931 f other neurological changeswere subsequentlydescribed. 62 for the denervated normal and dystrophic muscles, re- Recently our laboratory has been able to modify the pheno- spectively) was similar to the number of myofibers found in typic expression of murine muscular dystrophy in regenerated age-matched, unoperated normal muscles [922 + 26 (Ontell myofibers that form after the removal, and replacement,of whole et al., 1964)] and was significantly greater than the number young dystrophic muscle back into its original bed (Bourke and of myofibers found in age-matched dystrophic muscles Ontell, 1986).
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