Originally posted on WormAtlas by “Chris”, on October 15, 2004
Hi
Could you please tell me the size of a C. elegans muscle cell in the adult as well as the number of arms per cell? I cannot find any reference about that in the literature.
Thanks
christelle
Originally posted on WormAtlas by “hall”, on October 18, 2004
Bodywall muscles scale up in size as the animal’s overall length increases. So they start rather smaller and gradually increase in all dimensions as the worm grows in length and breadth. When first born, the cells are more block-like, so they must lengthen and flatten a lot during embryogenesis and larval stages to reach their final spindle shape.
For adult animals, one bodywall muscle is roughly 100 microns in length, with a tapered shape, so that the ends are narrowly pointed and the sarcomeres run somewhat oblique to the body axis. At its broadest point in mid muscle, the cell is roughly 10-12 microns wide (measuring across the width of about 5 or 6 sarcomeres) and perhaps 1.5-4 microns deep. Muscles near the nerve ring are somewhat deeper; muscles in midbody get squeezed somewhat thinner. Most of the that difference is in the amount of muscle belly cytoplasm; sarcomere width and depth is less variable.
Muscle arms extend away from the muscle in small numbers, maybe 1-3 per cell, but then each arm subdivides further as it approaces the muscle plate. Often a muscle call may extend one arm from each end of the cell’s extended length, plus one more arm from somewhere in the middle.
A fuller description of bodywall muscles in currently in prep for the WormAtlas.
David Hall
January 13, 2005
New data is now available online in the Handbook section illustrating the dimensions of muscle arms in relation to muscle cells. Using marker strains, it becomes clear that an individual bodywall muscle cell may extend 3-5 separate arms towards a nearby motor nerve
See
http://www.wormatlas.org/handbook/mesodermal.htm/musclepartI.htm
The new Muscle sections in the Handbook will also help to distinguish the different types of muscle cells in the nematode
Originally posted on WormAtlas by “zeynep a”, on February 13, 2005
Newly hatched C. elegans has on average 1.7 (+/- 0.8 ) muscle arms/cell. Young adults have 4.0(+/-1.0) muscle arms/cell. Each muscle cell grows more or less a stereotypical number of arms in all individuals. Post hatch the majority of muscle arm development occurs before the completion of L2 stage and concurrent with the birth of 53 (postembryonic) motor neurons. Cells of dorsal left and ventral right muscle quadrants which are closest to the two nerve cords have significantly more muscle arms/cell compared to the other quadrants (Scott J. Dixon & Peter Roy, Muscle arm Development in C. elegans, (2005) Development, in press)