Expression data from untreated vs. BMP4-treated cultured wild-type and MuSK null muscle cells (myoblasts and myotubes). Mus musculus

Bone morphogenic proteins (BMPs) function in virtually all tissues with cell-type specific outcomes. Since there are a relatively small number of BMP receptors this exquisite signaling specificity requires additional molecules to regulate the output of this pathway. We demonstrated that the receptor tyrosine kinase MuSK that is selectively expressed in muscle and plays a critical role in synapse formation and maintenance binds to BMP4 and related BMPs. Since BMPs regulate the transcription of a set of genes, we performed microarrays for wild-type and MuSK null muscle cells to test if MuSK regulates BMP responses in muscle cells. Overall design: We shought to determine if MuSK regulates BMP responses in muscle cells and if the cell context made any difference in MuSK regulation of BMP pathway. To test this, expression profiles of untreated vs. BMP4-treated undifferentiated myoblast and differentiated myotube cultures were generated for both wild-type and MuSK-null genotypes. All conditions were done in triplicates. In total 24 arrays were analyzed.