Postnatal cytochemical development of muscle fibers in segmental tail muscles of the rat.

Postnatal development of extrafusal and intrafusal muscle fibers was examined histochemically in segmental tail muscles of the rat. At birth all fibers show a strong reaction for myosin ATPase, uniformity in diameter, and homogeneity in staining intensity. During the first postnatal week, the muscle fibers undergo gradual hypertrophy and hyperplasia but they all maintain the same intense homogeneous staining pattern for the enzyme. By day 9, further differentiation of the muscle fibers results in the formation of a second intrafusal fiber type while the extrafusal fibers are still relatively homogeneous. Finally, two kinds of extrafusal fiber and a third type of intrafusal fiber can be distinguished by day 21. This histochemical fiber pattern is essentially maintained in the adult. These findings show that fiber type development in rat tail muscles lags behind the usual time course of myogenesis known to occur in more rostral regions of the animal. It also indicates that histochemical differentiation of intrafusal fibers in these muscles does not parallel that which occurs in extrafusal fibers. It is likely that arrival and initial contact of sensory nerve terminals on developing intrafusal fibers at day 7 directly influences their relatively early histochemical heterogeneity.