Division-Independent Differentiation of Muscle Stem Cells During a Growth Stimulus

Adult muscle stem cell (MuSC) behavior has been predominantly studied in the context of regeneration, a condition under which MuSCs exit quiescence and replicate upon activation before differentiating and fusing into myocytes. We use single-cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq) to identify transcriptionally diverse subpopulations of MuSCs after 5 days of a growth stimulus. MuSCs from plantaris muscles of doxyxycline treated Pax7rtTA; TRE-H2B-GFP mice, subjected to either sham surgery or 5-days of a growth stimulus, were isolated by Fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) according to the prescence of GFP signal and analyzed using scRNA-seq.