Analysis of gene expression in hTERT/cdk4 immortalized human myoblasts from multiple muscle pathologies compared to their primary populations

hTERT/cdk4 immortalized myogenic human cell lines represent an important tool for skeletal muscle research, being used as therapeutically-pertinent models of various neuromuscular disorders and in numerous fundamental studies of muscle cell function. However, the cell cycle is linked to other cellular processes such as integrin regulation, the PI3K/Akt pathway, and microtubule stability, raising the question as to whether transgenic modification of the cell cycle results in secondary effects that could undermine the validity of these cell models. Here we subjected healthy and disease myoblasts to intensive transcriptomic analysis, comparing immortalized cell populations, and clonal lines derived from them, with their parent primary populations. We found that immortalization has no measurable effect on the myogenic cascade or on any other cellular processes, and that it was protective against the systems level effects of senescence that are observed at higher division counts of primary cells. This dataset includes gene expression data of myoblasts derived from 4 human subjects: 1 healthy, 1 limb girdle muscular dystrophy type 2b (LGMD-2B), 1 facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD), and 1 oculopharyngeal muscular dystrophy (OPMD). It consists of 36 samples, including primary myoblasts, their immortalized populations, and a clone from each immortalized population (3 cell culture replicates each).