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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 May 28.
Published in final edited form as: Cell. 2008 Jul 11;134(1):37–47. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2008.05.049

FIGURE 5. Functional improvement in muscle contractile force following engraftment of wild-type SMPs into dystrophic muscle.

FIGURE 5

(A) Representative traces from contractile force measurements of SMP-transplanted (top rows) or mock-transplanted muscles. Traces are paired showing force production from contralateral muscles of the same recipient animal, and are normalized for muscle cross-sectional area. The % GFP+ myofibers detected upon subsequent sectioning of each muscle is indicated above each trace. Normalized data for all animals in the study, used for calculation of the fold differences and regression curves shown in (B and C) are provided in Table S1. (B) Regression analysis shows a significant (P<0.001) correlation between the fold difference from the control in Peak Specific Force production for the 10 min contraction protocol (plotted as the ratio of the average peak specific force in SMP-transplanted vs. mock-transplanted, contralateral soleus muscle) and the % GFP+ myofibers in the transplanted muscle. Each diamond represents data from an individual mouse (n=16). (C) Regression analysis shows significant (P<0.001) correlation between the fold difference from the control in Integrated Area Under the Curve (amplitude X duration) for the 10 min contraction protocol (plotted as the average integrated area under the curve in SMP-transplanted vs. mock-transplanted, contralateral soleus muscle) and the % GFP+ myofibers in the engrafted muscle. Each diamond represents an individual mouse (n=16). (D) Representative epifluorescence images showing GFP expression (green) in myofibers of mock-transplanted (left-most panel) or SMP-transplanted (three right panels) soleus muscles of individual mdx mice. Individual soleus muscles showed highly variable levels of engraftment, likely related to technical limitations in the efficiency of cell delivery that arise from the small size and less accessible anatomical location of the soleus.