So what are satellite cells? Satellite cells are the resident stem cells of skeletal muscle and essential for muscle repair. They are wedged in-between the membrane of the muscle fibre (one fibre can be seen) and a mesh of stringy proteins which is termed the basal lamina. In normal, adult muscle they are quiescent but after injury or resistance exercise incompletely understood signals make them become activated and divide. Later on they fuse together to form new muscle fibres or repair existing, damaged fibres. In the above image a muscle fibre with the resident satellite cells has been isolated by Roby. In the medium used the cells divide extensively and also migrate onto the plastic of the Petri dish. There are still many things we don't know: how do satellite cell become activated? What signals guide them towards an injury site? What makes them switch from cell division to repair? We believe that the Hippo pathway is part of the answer but we hope to learn to better control their behaviour for example to improve their muscle maintenance in old muscle or to use them or similar cells for the treatment of muscular dystrophy.
Finally, thanks for Prof Pete Zammit at King's College for showing us how to perform satellite cell isolations. Without his skills and generous support we would be still very close to square one!
HW
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