Figure 2.

Illustration of the isolation of primary muscle cells (pp1-pp6) via the preplate technique (A). MC13 cells purified from pp6 are positive for β-galactosidase (B, C) and desmin (E). Even after differentiation, the MC13 cells remain positive for LacZ (D). The MC13 cells are negative for α-SMA and vimentin (F, G). These results were confirmed by RT-PCR (H). The pp1/pp2 cell population was positive for both vimentin and α-SMA, but the NIH/3T3 cell population was positive only for vimentin. MC13 cells and pp6 cell populations were both negative for vimentin and α-SMA. β-Actin was used as an external control for the RT-PCR experiment.