Precocious in vitro development of satellite cells from dystrophic chicken muscle.

Satellite cells, liberated from pectoral muscle of juvenile dystrophic chickens by sequential treatment with collagenase, hyaluronidase, and trypsin and preplated to remove fibroblasts and cultured on gelatin proliferated rapidly, fused and formed confluent muscle cultures within 6 d in vitro with minimal contamination by fibroblasts. When identical isolation and culturing techniques were applied to muscle from age-matched normal chickens proliferation and differentiation were slower, contamination with fibroblasts was much greater, and only a small number of myotubes were formed. After injection of the myotoxic anesthetic marcaine into normal pectoral muscle for 5 consecutive days, myotube formation was accelerated in satellite cell cultures, but the rate of differentiation was not as rapid as that occurring in cells from dystrophic muscle.