Tissue Culture of Skeletal Muscle

In its simple forms, no special difficulty attaches to the tissue culture of skeletal muscle. Indeed, it is one of the easiest tissues to culture in large amounts because the starting material, skeletal muscle, is plentiful and readily obtainable from a wide variety of species, including humans. Moreover, the stem cells from which muscle develops in tissue culture seem to be very resilient; they will survive anoxic conditions within muscle at temperatures between 4 and 37�C, for up to a few days, and when obtained in suspension, are easy to freeze (with 10% DMSO as a cryoprotectant) and store in liquid nitrogen.