Post-transcriptional silencing of osteoglycin by small interfering RNAs (siRNA) during myogenesis

Abstract

Skeletal muscle differentiation, or myogenesis, is a highly orchestrated process in which mononucleated muscle precursor cells, the myoblasts, undergo proliferation. Upon differentiation, they withdraw from the cell cycle, migrate, align with each other, and subsequently fuse to form terminally differentiated multinucleated myotubes. Myogenesis deregulation is related to important skeletal muscle alterations found in muscular dystrophies, cachexia and sarcopenia. Studies reported that the myogenesis is a well-characterized program of cellular differentiation that is highly sensitive to the extracellular matrix. Previous reports have identified the protein osteoglycin (OGN, also called mimecan) as one of secreted proteins that showed to be differentially expressed during muscle development. Small interfering RNAs or siRNAs are responsible for post-transcriptional silencing of specific genes and is an important tool in the study of protein functions. In this work, we will test the hypothesis that post-transcriptional silencing of osteoglycin by siRNA modifies the processes of proliferation, migration and differentiation "in vitro" of C2C12 muscle cells.