Muscle Cell Development Lab Report

The goal of this experiment is to understand muscle cell development by studying the proliferation and differentiation progress of C2C12 cells, which are myoblast line isolated from the thigh muscle of adult mice that can be induced to differentiate into skeletal muscle-like cells.
C2C12 cells have been subcultured under conditions such as high serum media to maintain their undifferentiated state before they reach 100% confluency. Once the cells reached 100% confluency, they will turn on muscle specific gene such as MyoD that will promote expression of p21 to block cell cycle and will drive differentiation into myotubes. Complete differentiation to myotubes requires shifting the serum to 2% horse serum in the media to slow down the proliferation progress. In this experiment, we will plate the C2C12 cells in three different densities on one 6-well plate and two 8-chamber slides. Cells that reached about 80% confluency …show more content…
If we want to observe the differentiation rate of C2C12 with or without the low serum treatment, we will have to run the experiment again. As we mentioned earlier that cells tend to differentiate better in the 6-well plate rather than in the 8-well chamber slide, we would like to perform the immunofluorescence staining in an alternative type of plate if it is available. Another possible way to prove the differentiation of myoblast is to use an additional marker such as p21 for staining. There are many ways to optimize the experiment for a better result, however, adjustment shall depends on the level of detail that we are looking for from our experiment as cost would be an important factor to be considered. The design of our experiment at this point is efficient to provide us the information we