Early effects in vitro of the muscular dysgenesis mutation on nervous tissue in the mouse

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Abstract
Muscular dysgenesis (mdg), a disease expressed in embryonic mice, severely affects the formation and differentiation of skeletal musculature. The focus of this investigation was an analysis of dysgenic nervous tissue with special attention centered on interactions between muscle and nerve cells in vitro. Results indicate that mdg/mdg spinal cord cells can form functional neuromuscular junctions in nervehyphen;muscle cocultures and induce contractions in dysgenic muscle. However, dysgenic spinal cord cells induce fewer myotubes to contract and result in a delayed induction of dysgenic myotube contractile activity. Furthermore, mdg/mdg nervous tissue, or its conditioned medium, is associated with a higher incidence of morphologically abnormal myotube contractures. The results from this investgation demonstrate that there are functional abnormalities in both dysgenic muscle and nervous tissues which are stable and expressed for up to 3 weeks in vitro.