One source for muscle

摘要

Producing muscle as an embryo, and making or repairing it as an adult, could be considered to be quite different processes. But it seems that cells that share a common origin carry out both of these tasks. The generation and repair of skeletal muscle is a highly ordered, multi-step process that requires many progenitor cells and continues throughout embryonic, fetal and postnatal life. In this issue, Gros et al. (page 954) and Relaix et al. (page 948) show that a common progenitor cell not only maintains muscle growth during late embryonic development, but also seems to be the origin of the satellite cells responsible for postnatal muscle growth and repair.