Electrical Pulse Stimulation of Primary Human Skeletal Muscle Cells

Nataša Nikolić; Vigdis Aas

doi:10.1007/978-1-4939-8897-6_2

Electrical Pulse Stimulation of Primary Human Skeletal Muscle Cells

Methods Mol Biol. 2019:1889:17-24. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4939-8897-6_2.

Authors

Nataša Nikolić¹, Vigdis Aas²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Pharmaceutical Biosciences, School of Pharmacy, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway. natasa.nikolic@farmasi.uio.no.
² Department of Life Sciences and Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway.

PMID: 30367406
DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4939-8897-6_2

Abstract

Electrical pulse stimulation (EPS) is an in vitro method of inducing contractions in cultured skeletal muscle cells of human and animal origin. Motor neuron activation of muscle fibers can be replaced by applying EPS on differentiated skeletal muscle cells (myotubes) in culture (Thelen et al. Biochemical J 321:845-848, 1997, Fujita et al. Exp Cell Res 313:1853-1865, 2007).Here we describe two protocols for EPS of human myotubes in 6-well plates: acute, high-frequency (single bipolar pulses of 2 ms, 100 Hz for 200 ms every fifth second for 5-60 min, 10-30 V) and chronic, low-frequency (single bipolar pulses of 2 ms, 1 Hz 10-30 V for 48 h) at the end of a 7 days long differentiation.

Keywords: Contractions; Electrical pulse stimulations; Myotubes; Skeletal muscle.

MeSH terms

Cell Differentiation
Electric Stimulation*
Humans
Muscle Contraction / physiology
Muscle Fibers, Skeletal / cytology
Muscle Fibers, Skeletal / physiology*
Primary Cell Culture