Myogenin is an essential regulator of adult myofibre growth and muscle stem cell homeostasis

  1. Massimo Ganassi  Is a corresponding author
  2. Sara Badodi
  3. Kees Wanders
  4. Peter S Zammit
  5. Simon M Hughes  Is a corresponding author
  1. King's College London, United Kingdom
  2. Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom
  3. Kings College London, United Kingdom

Abstract

Growth and maintenance of skeletal muscle fibres depend on coordinated activation and return to quiescence of resident muscle stem cells (MuSCs). The transcription factor Myogenin (Myog) regulates myocyte fusion during development, but its role in adult myogenesis remains unclear. In contrast to mice, myog-/- zebrafish are viable, but have hypotrophic muscles. By isolating adult myofibres with associated MuSCs we found that myog-/- myofibres have severely reduced nuclear number, but increased myonuclear domain size. Expression of fusogenic genes is decreased, Pax7 upregulated, MuSCs are fivefold more numerous and mis-positioned throughout the length of myog-/- myofibres instead of localising at myofibre ends as in wild-type. Loss of Myog dysregulates mTORC1 signalling, resulting in an 'alerted' state of MuSCs, which display precocious activation and faster cell cycle entry ex vivo, concomitant with myod upregulation. Thus, beyond controlling myocyte fusion, Myog influences the MuSC:niche relationship, demonstrating a multi-level contribution to muscle homeostasis throughout life.

Data availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Massimo Ganassi

    Randall Centre for Cell and Molecular Biophysics, King's College London, London, United Kingdom
    For correspondence
    massimo.ganassi@kcl.ac.uk
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Sara Badodi

    Blizard Institute, Queen Mary University of London, London, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Kees Wanders

    Randall Centre for Cell and Molecular Biophysics, King's College London, London, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-3209-9853
  4. Peter S Zammit

    Randall Centre for Cell and Molecular Biophysics, Kings College London, London, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-9562-3072
  5. Simon M Hughes

    Randall Centre for Cell and Molecular Biophysics, King's College London, London, United Kingdom
    For correspondence
    simon.hughes@kcl.ac.uk
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-8227-9225

Funding

Medical Research Council (G1001029)

  • Simon M Hughes

Medical Research Council (MR/N021231/1)

  • Simon M Hughes

Medical Research Council (MR/P023215/1)

  • Peter S Zammit

Medical Research Council (MR/S002472/1)

  • Peter S Zammit

Muscular Dystrophy UK (RA3/3052)

  • Peter S Zammit

Association Francaise contre les Myopathies (AFM17865)

  • Peter S Zammit

FSH Society (FSHS-82013-06)

  • Peter S Zammit

FSH Society (FSHS-82017-05)

  • Peter S Zammit

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Animal experimentation: All experiments were performed on zebrafish derived from F2 or later filial generation, in accordance with licence held under the UK Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 and later modifications and conforming to all relevant guidelines and regulations.

Copyright

© 2020, Ganassi et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

Metrics

  • 5,819
    views
  • 606
    downloads
  • 96
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Massimo Ganassi
  2. Sara Badodi
  3. Kees Wanders
  4. Peter S Zammit
  5. Simon M Hughes
(2020)
Myogenin is an essential regulator of adult myofibre growth and muscle stem cell homeostasis
eLife 9:e60445.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.60445

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.60445

Further reading

    1. Developmental Biology
    Yanlin Hou, Zhengwen Nie ... Hans R Scholer
    Research Article

    During the first lineage segregation, mammalian embryos generate the inner cell mass (ICM) and trophectoderm (TE). ICM gives rise to the epiblast (EPI) that forms all cell types of the body, an ability referred to as pluripotency. The molecular mechanisms that induce pluripotency in embryos remain incompletely elucidated. Using knockout (KO) mouse models in conjunction with low-input ATAC-seq and RNA-seq, we found that Oct4 and Sox2 gradually come into play in the early ICM, coinciding with the initiation of Sox2 expression. Oct4 and Sox2 activate the pluripotency-related genes through the putative OCT-SOX enhancers in the early ICM. Furthermore, we observed a substantial reorganization of chromatin landscape and transcriptome from the morula to the early ICM stages, which was partially driven by Oct4 and Sox2, highlighting their pivotal role in promoting the developmental trajectory toward the ICM. Our study provides new insights into the establishment of the pluripotency network in mouse preimplantation embryos.

    1. Developmental Biology
    2. Neuroscience
    Maria I Lazaro-Pena, Carlos A Diaz-Balzac
    Insight

    The ligand Netrin mediates axon guidance through a combination of haptotaxis over short distances and chemotaxis over longer distances.