Fig. 2. Dystrophin is associated with the wild type (WT) embryonic muscle attachments. dystrophin mRNA (dmd) localises intracellularly to WT somite boundaries both before (19 hours post-fertilisation, A) and after (27 hours post-fertilisation, B) muscle fibre differentiation (arrowheads, lateral views). At 19 hours post-fertilisation, a crescent of mRNA is present at one side of undifferentiated cells that abut somite boundaries. Dystrophin protein (dys) is localised embryonically to fibre ends at somite boundaries, and at NMJs but not at the sarcolemma (C, horizontal section, 72 hours post-fertilisation). Dystrophin (green) in fibre ends sandwiches the ECM of the vertical myoseptum at somite boundaries, which contain tenascin-C (tn-c, red; arrowhead in D, horizontal section, 72 hours post-fertilisation). Dystrophin localises to fibre ends and NMJs but not to the sarcolemma embryonically (arrowheads in E, transverse section, 72 hours post-fertilisation). Dystrophin is detectable at muscle attachments (arrowheads in E-G), but triple labelling using anti-dystrophin (green), Alexa594--Bungarotoxin to label NMJs (rbtx, red), and DAPI (blue) reveals that dystrophin within the myotome is at NMJs, co-localising with rbtx to produce an overlapping yellow signal (arrows in F,G; horizontal sections 72 hours post-fertilisation).

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