Muscle-specific gene expression during myogenesis in the mouse

Over the past decade, significant advances in molecular biological techniques have substantially increased our understanding of in vivo myogenesis, supplementing the information that previously had been obtained from classical embryological and morphological studies of muscle development. In this review, we have attempted to correlate morphogenetic events in developing murine muscle with the expression of genes encoding the MyoD family of myogenic regulatory factors and the contractile proteins. Differences in the pattern of expression of these genes in murine myotomal and limb muscle are discussed in the context of muscle cell lineage and environmental factors. The differences in gene expression in these two types of muscle suggest that no single coordinated pattern of gene activation is required during the initial formation of the muscles of the mouse.