Our purpose was to determine if physiological characteristics of skeletal muscles of dogs and cats are related to their histochemical and biochemical characteristics. Maximum oxygen consumption (VO2max) and blood flow (Q) at VO2max were determined for in situ muscles of dogs and cats. Compared to cat muscles, dog muscles per unit mass had higher succinate oxidase activities, VO2max's, and Q's a...

In adults, muscle fibres match the functional requirements of the motoneurone that supplies them. During early stages of postnatal development of the rat neither muscle fibre properties, nor activity patterns of motoneurones supplying fast and slow muscles have completed their differentiation. Nevertheless, even at this early stage of development the muscles have characteristic properties that ...

We examined the role of post-transcriptional mechanisms in controlling utrophin A mRNA expression in slow versus fast skeletal muscles. First, we determined that the half-life of utrophin A mRNA is significantly shorter in the presence of proteins isolated from fast muscles. Direct plasmid injection experiments using reporter constructs containing the full-length or truncated variants of the ut...