Skeletal muscle precursors do not arise from bone marrow cells.

This paper tests the hypothesis that bone marrow stem cells can give rise to circulating muscle precursor cells. Irradiated host mice were reconstituted with bone marrow cells from a second strain of mice: the two strains were each homozygous for one of the two different isoenzyme forms of the enzyme glucose-6-phosphate isomerase, which enable cells of the two strains to be identified by different isoenzyme mobilities on starch gel electrophoresis. Isoenzyme patterns of 16 regenerated muscle isografts and 7 samples of host muscle (from 13 mice) were examined to determine whether donor bone marrow cells contributed to formation of new skeletal muscle. No evidence was found to support the hypothesis that myoblasts can arise from bone marrow precursor cells, although the possibility that muscle precursor cells derived from other tissues may circulate in the blood stream was not excluded.