Figure 2.

The phenomenon of NMJ fragmentation during aging and dystrophy. Tibialis anterior muscles of wildtype (wt) or dystrophic mdx mice were injected with fluorescently labeled α-bungarotoxin to mark AChRs at the indicated ages and then imaged using in vivo confocal microscopy. Images show maximum intensity projections of several NMJs (left) and binarized pictures (right) to highlight the observation that in young wt AChRs form contiguous, “pretzel-like,” bands while they align in fragmented clusters in aged wt and middle aged dystrophic muscles.