Figure - PMC

Skip to main content

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

View full-text article in PMC

. 2021 Jun 3;11:11695. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-91203-5

Search in PMC
Search in PubMed
View in NLM Catalog
Add to search

© The Author(s) 2021

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

PMC Copyright notice

3D culture of primary human skeletal muscle enhances acetylcholine receptor clustering, produces functional force and upregulates transcription of post-synaptic mRNAs. (a) Confocal tile scans of single z-plane (Tissue engineered 3D) and fluorescence images (Monolayer 2D) of human skeletal muscle labelled for AChR on the post-synaptic membrane, pan-myosin heavy chain (MF-20), laminin (monolayer only) and nuclear DNA (DAPI) across 1, 2 and 3 weeks culture. Morphological analysis of (b) myotube diameter, (c) AChR density and (d) cluster size. Transcriptional analysis of myogenic; (e) MYOD and (f) MYOG, and post-synaptic; (g) MUSK and (h) LRP4 mRNAs. Blue bars = Monolayer (2D), Red bars = Spheroid (3D). (i) Zoom images of AChR in monolayer (2D) and tissue engineered (3D) skeletal muscle. (j) Functional tetanus and twitch force data and (k) representative traces in engineered tissues. Δ change indicative of normalised data to the earliest monolayer time-point. Beginning of representative tetanus and twitch contractions represents initiation of electrical field stimulation, time elapsed before this point is un-stimulated baseline recording. Data presented ± standard deviation (SD). *P ≤ 0.05, **P ≤ 0.01 and ***P ≤ 0.001. Scale bars = (a) 100 µm, (i) 20 µm.