Intact Short, Intermediate, and Long Skeletal Muscle Fibers Obtained by Enzymatic Dissociation of Six Hindlimb Muscles of Mice: Beyond Flexor Digitorum Brevis

Summary

We describe a protocol to obtain enzymatically dissociated fibers of different lengths and types from six muscles of adult mice: three of them already described (flexor digitorum brevis, extensor digitorum longus, soleus) and three of them successfully dissociated for the first time (extensor hallucis longus, peroneus longus, peroneus digiti quarti).

Abstract

Skeletal muscle fibers obtained by enzymatic dissociation of mouse muscles are a useful model for physiological experiments. However, most papers deal with the short fibers of the flexor digitorum brevis (FDB), which restrains the scope of results dealing with fiber types, limits the amount of biological material available, and impedes a clear connection between cellular physiological phenomena and previous biochemical and dynamical knowledge obtained in other muscles.

This paper describes how to obtain intact fibers from six muscles with different fiber type profiles and lengths. Using C57BL/6 adult mice, we show the muscle dissection and fiber isolation protocol and demonstrate the suitability of the fibers for Ca²⁺ transient studies and their morphometric characterization. The fiber type composition of the muscles is also presented. When dissociated, all muscles rendered intact, living fibers that contract briskly for more than 24 h. FDB gave short (<1 mm), peroneus digiti quarti (PDQA) and peroneus longus (PL) gave intermediate (1-3 mm), while extensor digitorum longus (EDL), extensor hallucis longus (EHL), and soleus muscles released long (3-6 mm) fibers.

When recorded with the fast dye Mag-Fluo-4, Ca²⁺ transients of PDQA, PL, and EHL fibers showed the fast, narrow kinetics reminiscent of the morphology type II (MT-II), known to correspond to type IIX and IIB fibers. This is consistent with the fact that these muscles have over 90% of type II fibers compared with FDB (~80%) and soleus (~65%). Moving beyond FDB, we demonstrate for the first time the dissociation of several muscles, which render fibers spanning a range of lengths between 1 and 6 mm. These fibers are viable and give fast Ca²⁺ transients, indicating that the MT-II can be generalized to IIX and IIB fast fibers, regardless of their muscle source. These results increase the availability of models for mature skeletal muscle studies.

Introduction

The mature skeletal muscle of mammals is a multifunctional tissue. It heavily regulates metabolism, is the main source of heat production, and its dynamical properties confer upon it a key role in respiration, movement of body segments, or displacement from one point to another^1,2,3. Skeletal muscle is also relevant for the pathophysiology of many illnesses, including inherited and chronic conditions, such as myopathies, dystrophies, or sarcopenia, as well as many non-muscle chronic conditions, such as cardiometabolic diseases^3,

Protocol

All procedures were approved by the Committee for Ethics in Experiments with animals of the University of Antioquia (UdeA) (minutes 104 of June 21^st, 2016, and 005 of April 15^th, 2021), according to Law 84 of 1989 and Resolution 8430 of 1993 issued by the Colombian Government and were performed and reported in compliance with the Animal Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) guidelines⁴¹. All results presented here come from healthy, 7-13 weeks old, 20-26 g.......

Discussion

To complement the models available for studying mature skeletal muscle biology, here we demonstrate the successful enzymatic dissociation of a range of mouse muscles with short, intermediate, and long fibers. These fibers allow for the demonstration of the generalizability of the MT-II kinetics of the Ca²⁺ transients in skeletal muscle. Further, the fiber types in the intact, whole muscles were classified. Given that the FDB is the most used muscle for physiological experiments, the types of fibers present in .......

Materials

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
Reagents
Absolute ethanol	Sigma Aldrich	32221
Acetone	Merck	179124
Acrylamide	Gibco BRL	15512-015
Ammonium persulfate	Panreac	141138.1610
Anti myosin I antibody	Sigma Aldrich	M4276	Primary antibody
Anti myosin II antibody	Sigma Aldrich	M8421	Primary antibody
Anti myosin IIA antibody	American Type Culture Collection	SC-71	Primary antibody. Derived from HB-277 hybridoma
Anti myosin IIB antibody	Developmental Studies Hybridoma Bank	BF-F3-c	Primary antibody
Bis-acrylamide	AMRESCO	0172
Bovine serum albumin	Thermo Scientific	B14
Bradford reagent	Merck	1.10306.0500
Bromophenol blue	Carlo Erba	428658
Calcium carbonate	Merck	102066
Calcium dichloride (CaCl2)	Merck	2389
Chloroform	Sigma Aldrich	319988
Collagenase type 2	Worthington	CLS-2/LS004176
Consul-Mount	Thermo Scientific	9990440
Coomassie Brilliant blue R 250	Merck	112553
Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO)	Sigma Aldrich	D2650
Dithiothreitol (DTT)	AMRESCO	0281
Edetic acid (EDTA	AMRESCO	0322
Eosin Y	Sigma Aldrich	E4009
Glycerol	Panreac	1423291211
Glycine	Panreac	151340.1067
Goat serum	Sigma Aldrich	G9023
Hematoxylin	Thermo Scientific	6765015
HEPES	AMRESCO	0511
Hoechst 33258	Sigma Aldrich	861405
Imidazole	AMRESCO	M136
Isopentane	Sigma Aldrich	M32631
Laminin	Sigma Aldrich	L2020
Mag-Fluo-4, AM	Invitrogen	M14206	Prepared only in DMSO. Pluronic acid is not required and should not be used to avoid fiber deterioration.
Mercaptoethanol	Applichem	A11080100
Methanol	Protokimica	MP10043
Mice	Several	Several	For this manuscript, we only used C57BL/6 mice. However, some preliminary results have shown that the protocol works well for Swiss Webster mice of the same age and weight.
Mowiol 4-88	Sigma Aldrich	81381
N,N,N',N'-tetramethylethane-1,2-diamine (TEMED)	Promega	V3161
N-benzyl-p-toluene sulphonamide (BTS)	Tocris	1870
Optimal cutting compound (OCT)	Thermo Scientific	6769006
Secondary antibody	Thermo Scientific	A-11001	Goat anti-mouse IgG (H+L) Cross-Adsorbed Secondary Antibody, Alexa Fluor 488
Sodium dodecil sulfate	Panreac	1323631209
TRIS 0.5 M, pH 6.8	AMRESCO	J832
Tris(Hydroxymethyl)aminomethane	AMRESCO	M151
Triton X-100	AMRESCO	M143
Materials
Dissection chamber	Custom-made
Charged slides	Erie Scientific	5951PLUS
Experimental bath chamber	Warner Instruments	RC-27NE2	Narrow Bath Chamber with Field Stimulation, ensembled on a heated platform PH-6
Fine forceps	World Precision Instruments	500338, 500230
Fine scissors	World Precision Instruments	Vannas Scissors 501778
Glass Pasteur pipettes	Several		Fire-polished tips
Glass vials with cap	Several		2-3 mL volumen
Operating scissors	World Precision Instruments	501223-G
Equipment
Centrifuge	Thermo Scientific	SL 8R
Confocal microscope	Olympus	FV1000
Cryostat	Leica	CM1850
Digital camera	Zeiss	Erc 5s and Axio 305	Axio 305, coupled to the Stemi 508 stereoscope, was used to take pictures during dissection; while Erc 5s or Axio 208, coupled to the Axio Observer A1 microscope, were used to take images of the isolated fibers and the immunofluorescence assays
Digitizer	Molecular Devices	1550A Digidata
Electrophoresis chamber	Bio Rad	Mini-Protean IV
Inverted microscope coupled to fluorescence	Zeiss	Axio Observer A1	Coupled to an appropriate light source, filters and objectives for fluorescence
Photomultiplier	Horiba	R928 tube, Hamamatsu, in a D104 photometer, Horiba	Coupled to the lateral port of the fluorescence microscope
Stereoscope	Zeiss	Stemi 508
Stimulator	Grass Instruments	S6
Water bath	Memmert	WNE-22
Xilol	Sigma Aldrich	808691
Software
Free software for electrophoreses analyses	University of Kentucky	GelBandFitter v1.7	http://www.gelbandfitter.org
Free software for image analysis and morphometry	National Institutes of Health	ImageJ v1.54	https://imagej.nih.gov/ij/index.html
Licensed software for Ca2+ signals acquisition and analyses	Molecular Devices	pCLAMP v10.05	https://www.moleculardevices.com
Licensed software for statistical analyses and graphing	OriginLab	OriginPro 2019	https://www.originlab.com/