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Muscle Stem Cells, Volume 158 in the Current Topics of Developmental Biology series, highlights new advances in the field, with this new volume presenting interesting chapters on topics surrounding Muscle stem cell dysfunction in rhabdomyosarcoma and muscular dystrophy, Model systems used to study MuSC function, MuSCs in the growth and maintenance of muscle, Molecular regulation of myocyte fusion, A self-made quiescent niche of muscle stem cells, Characterization of the muscle regenerative environment, Role of microenvironment on muscle stem cell function in health, adaptation, and disease, Vascular Niche for Muscle Stem Cells, Regulation of muscle stem cell polarity in health and disease, and more.Additional chatpers cover Circadian timing of satellite cell function and muscle regeneration, Muscle stem cell activity is regulated by translational control of gene expression, Biomechanical stress in modulating MuSC function, Cross talk between cell types in regenerating muscle, Effects of the immune system on muscle regeneration, Effects of diabetes on MuSC function, and other timely topics. - Provides the authority and expertise of leading contributors from an international board of authors - Presents the latest release in the Current Topics in Developmental Biology series - Updated release includes the latest information on the Muscle Stem Cells

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

Whenever a dancer or an athlete performs amazing feats, it is the consequence of two very interesting cell types: neurons and muscles. When the two of these cell types work together, animals can move in complex ways with surprising control. Not only do they work together to produce movement, they have many traits in common. They both convert chemical signals into electrical information, and then back into chemical information again. This book will examine how neurons process information and communicate to adjacent cells. This book presents how muscle cells know when to contract and how contraction leads to bigger muscles. Finally, the last chapter presents how long-term memories are formed. In all three chapters, some of the original data that have contributed to our understanding of these two fascinating cell types are reproduced to provide supporting evidence for the function of these two cell types.

This book describes the diverse roles that growth factors and cytokines play in skeletal muscle. The extracellular environment has profound effects on the biology of skeletal muscle. The soluble portion of this environment includes a rich milieu of growth factors and cytokines which have been shown to regulate virtually all facets of the response of skeletal muscle to external stimuli, whether it be exercise induced metabolic shifts, remodeling in response to trauma or loading of the ongoing pathology associated with neuromuscular disease. The chapters included in this work illustrate growth factors that directly affect skeletal muscle cells and those which influence non-muscle cells that contribute to the biology of skeletal muscle as a whole tissue. The current state of the art, with the advent of systems biology, allows for the delineation of signaling networks which are regulated by suites of growth factors. This is in stark contrast to early more traditional studies, which only examined the effects of isolated growth factors on the activity of skeletal muscle precursor cells in tissue culture. The work presented in this volume ranges from reviewing and analyzing the roles of individual growth factors in detail, to the complex interplay of multiple soluble factors in the control of muscle functional, and dysfunctional states. The material covered in this volume will particularly suit readers from a range of research fields spanning general muscle biology and physiology, and those working on diseases and conditions affecting skeletal muscle both directly and indirectly.

This book discusses current research in the study of the development, disorders and regeneration of muscle cells. Topics include the basic biology and current concepts of muscle regeneration; calvarial and periodontal tissue induction by autogenous striated muscle stem cells; the role of muscle cells on the processus vaginalis; a discussion on the key residues which cause differential gallbladder response to PACAP and VIP in the guinea pig; and controlling muscle functions with light.

The tissue culture approach to the study of membrane properties of excitable cells has progressed beyond the technical problems of culture methodology. Recent developments have fostered substantive contributions in research con­ cerned with the physiology, pharmacology, and biophysics of cell membranes in tissue culture. The scope of this volume is related to the application of tissue culture methodology to developmental processes and cellular mechanisms of electrical and chemical excitability. The major emphasis will be on the body of new biological information made available by the analytic possibilities inherent in the tissue culture systems. Naturally occurring preparations of excitable cells are frequently of suf­ ficient morphological complexity to compromise the analysis of the data obtained from them. Some of the limitations associated with dissected prepa­ rations have to do with the direct visualization of and access to the cell(s) in question and maintenance of steady-state conditions for prolonged periods of time. Since preparations in tissue culture can circumvent these problems, it is feasible to analyze the properties of identifiable cells, grown either singly or in prescribed geometries, as well as to follow the development of cellular inter­ actions. A crucial consideration in the use of cultured preparations is that they must faithfully capture the phenomenon of interest to the investigator. This and other potential limitations on the methodology are of necessary concern in the present volume.

This volume intends to provide a comprehensive overview on the mecha­ nisms of muscle contraction and non-muscle cell motility at the molecu­ lar and cellular level, not only for investigators in these fields but also for general readers interested in these topics. A most attractive feature of various living organisms in the animal and plant kingdoms is their ability to move. In spite of a great diversity in the structure and function of various motile systems, it has frequently been assumed since the nineteenth century that all kinds of'motility'are essentially the same. Based on this assumption, some investigators in the nineteenth century thought that the mechanisms of motility could better be studied on primitive non-muscle motile systems such as amoeboid movement, rath­ er than on highly specialized muscle cells. Contrary to their expectation, however, the basic mechanisms of motility have been revealed solely by investigations on vertebrate skeletal muscles, since a monumental discovery of Szent-Gyorgyi and his coworkers in the early 1940s that muscle contraction results from the interaction between two different contractile proteins, actin and myosin, coupled with ATP hydrolysis.

This atlas will illustrate the distribution and morphological features of interstitial cells of Cajal (ICC) which are the key cells to understanding of the regulatory mechanism of gastrointestinal motility, since ICC act as both pacemaker and as intermediates in neural transmission, and since ICC show specific distribution patterns depending on their anatomical positions. All subtypes of ICC located in the different tissue layers and different levels of the gastrointestinal tract will be revealed by immunohistochemistry for Kit receptors and nerves by using mainly whole-mount stretch preparation of the guinea-pig tissues. Three-dimensional reconstruction of confocal images will particularly help the readers to understand the peculiar arrangement of ICC networks in situ and the correlation between ICC and nerves. Electron micrographs will help illustrate the characteristic features of ICC and their ultrastructural differences from fibroblasts, smooth muscles and other interstitial cells.

The general aim of this book is to provide a comprehensive summary of the characteristics of exercise-induced muscle damage and the mechanisms of tissue inflammation. The authors present a large amount of our own original data and have summarized the research of others. This book will be of interest to students, researchers and practitioners in the field of exercise physiology, physiotherapy and occupational therapy.

Histologically, muscle is conveniently divided into two groups, striated and nonstriated, based on whether the cells exhibit cross-striations in the light microscope (Figure 3). Smooth muscle is involuntary: its contraction is controlled by the autonomic nervous system. Striated muscle includes both cardiac (involuntary) and skeletal (voluntary). The former is innervated by visceral efferent fibers of the autonomic nervous system, whereas the latter is innervated by somatic efferent fibers, most of which have their cell bodies in the ventral, motor horn of the spinal cord. Smooth muscle is designed to have slow, relatively sustained contractions, while striated muscle contracts rapidly and usually phasically. Both cardiac and smooth muscle cells are mononucleated, whereas skeletal muscle cells (fibers) are multinucleated. [In aging hearts or hypertrophied hearts, cardiac muscle cells are often binucleated.] Multinucleation of skeletal muscle arises during development by the cytoplasmic fusion of muscle precursor cells, myoblasts. Adult skeletal muscle cells do not divide; that is also true of most cardiac myocytes. However, skeletal muscle exhibits a considerable amount of regeneration after injury. This is because adult skeletal muscle contains a stem cell, the satellite cell, which lies beneath the basement membrane surrounding the muscle fibers. [The multinucleation of cardiac muscle arises from karyokinesis without cytokinesis.] A diagrammatic series of enlargements of skeletal muscle are shown in Figure 4. A bundle of muscle fibers (fasciculus) is cut from the deltoid muscle. Each muscle cell is termed a myofiber or muscle fiber. Each muscle fiber contains contractile organelles termed myofibrils, which contain the contractile units of muscle termed sarcomeres. The sarcomeres are composed of myofilaments, which in turn are composed of contractile proteins. Muscle connective tissue layers are organized in concentric layers that are important in the entry and exit of vessels and nerves to and from the tissue. These are shown in Figure 5. The outermost layer is the epimysium or muscle sheath. Connective tissue septae (perimysium) run radially into the muscle tissue, dividing it into muscle fascicles. The deepest layer, surrounding each of the muscle fibers is the endomysium. The endomysium is in direct contact with a basal lamina that ensheathes each muscle fiber. It surrounds the plasma membrane of the muscle fiber termed the sarcolemma.

Cellular Physiology of Nerve and Muscle, Fourth Edition offers a state of the art introduction to the basic physical, electrical and chemical principles central to the function of nerve and muscle cells. The text begins with an overview of the origin of electrical membrane potential, then clearly illustrates the cellular physiology of nerve cells and muscle cells. Throughout, this new edition simplifies difficult concepts with accessible models and straightforward descriptions of experimental results. An all-new introduction to electrical signaling in the nervous system. Expanded coverage of synaptic transmission and synaptic plasticity. A quantitative overview of the electrical properties of cells. New detailed illustrations.

Skeletal muscle development is perhaps one of the best understood processes at the molecular, cellular and organismal level due in large part to the fact that primary myogenic cells (myoblasts) will grow and subsequently differentiate into myotubes in culture. With the advent of reverse mouse genetics, many of the observations gained through the study of myogenic cells in vitro have been directly tested in vivo. What has emerged is a complex but cohesive story of how myogenic cells are initially specified in the vertebrate embryo and how muscle fibers ultimately achieve their respective identities (i.e. fast versus slow) to perform their function. This collection of chapters is focused on these developments. The book discusses old and new directions for the skeletal muscle field and points out directions where the field may eventually progress.