Interstitial mesenchymal cells in skeletal muscle

Skeletal muscle tissues are comprised of muscle fibers, muscle stem cells (MuSCs), immune cells, endothelial cells, motor/sensory nerves with Schwann cells, and interstitial mesenchymal cells. Each cell population plays a unique role in muscle physiology and homeostasis. The mesenchymal progenitors in the skeletal muscle have been identified as a subpopulation that reside between muscle fibers, whose role is to coordinate muscle regeneration in a finely tuned manner by supporting the expansion and differentiation of MuSCs. These cells have been referred to as fibro/adipogenic progenitor cells (FAPs), termed according to their differentiation potentials in specific in vitro culture conditions and known to cause fibrous tissue and fatty degeneration under pathological environments and result in compromised muscle function. To gain insight into how Bap1 plays a role in skeletal muscle homeostasis, we performed RNA sequencing analysis using freshly isolated Sca1 positive cells from 1.5-week-old WT or cKO hindlimb muscles Gene expression profiling of mesenchymal cells from WT and Prx1-Cre;Bap1f/f conditional knock out MuSCs.