Fig. 1

Myoblasts were successfully differentiated into myotubes. a Muscle progenitor cells (myoblasts) were differentiated into myotubes in presence of differentiation media. This cell population was predominately comprised of myotubes although there were some myoblasts present. AraC treatment of the myotubes was undertaken to remove undifferentiated myoblasts. b Double immunostained images of cells harvested at different stages of myogenic progression. The AraC treatment resulted in the apparent removal of the myoblasts from the terminally differentiated myotubes as evidenced by the presence of cell-free patches in the AraC-treated cultures. Cells were immunostained for myosin (green), nuclei (blue) and mitochondria (red). c Myog and other skeletal muscle-specific genes (Acta1, Myh1, Myh2, Myh4, Tnnt1) are markedly upregulated in the myotubes with and without AraC treatment when compared to myoblasts. This indicates successful differentiation at the level of muscle-specific molecular markers. Transcript levels are shown as the mean of the log FPKM for the biological repeats ± SE