Journal
MOLECULAR THERAPY
Volume 17, Issue 1, Pages 19-25Publisher
CELL PRESS
DOI: 10.1038/mt.2008.239
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Funding
- Swiss Foundation for Research on Muscle Diseases
- European CLINIGENE Network of Excellence
- Swiss National Science Foundation
- Telethon and Duchenne Parent Project Italia
- Universities of Lausanne and Geneva
- Institute Pasteur Cenci-Bolognetti
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Dystrophin mediates a physical link between the cytoskeleton of muscle fibers and the extracellular matrix, and its absence leads to muscle degeneration and dystrophy. In this article, we show that the lack of dystrophin affects the elasticity of individual fibers within muscle tissue explants, as probed using atomic force microscopy (AFM), providing a sensitive and quantitative description of the properties of normal and dystrophic myofibers. The rescue of dystrophin expression by exon skipping or by the ectopic expression of the utrophin analogue normalized the elasticity of dystrophic muscles, and these effects were commensurate to the functional recovery of whole muscle strength. However, a more homogeneous and widespread restoration of normal elasticity was obtained by the exon-skipping approach when comparing individual myofibers. AFM may thus provide a quantification of the functional benefit of gene therapies from live tissues coupled to single-cell resolution.
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