Fig. 1.

This figure shows an overview of the experiments. The right ankle of the transgenic Pax7-DTA mice were casted in plantarflexion such that the soleus fibers would shorten in length, while the tibialis anterior will add sarcomeres and increase in length. The contralateral leg served as a casting-control. After this, the mice underwent treatment for satellite cells (muscle stem cells) with tamoxifen inducing the Cre-Lox system to systemically ablate satellite cells from all muscles (right). The casts were then removed with all mice demonstrating resting plantarflexion angle. The tamoxifen (right) and vehicle-control (left) groups were allowed to recover their ankle ROM over 30 days.