ABSTRACT
Skeletal muscle accounts for 40% of the hum an body and is the major consumer o f body fuels. Contraction within muscle fibers by ATP consumption generates the force required for our body movement, but the coordinated transmission o f this force through the muscle cell membrane to the surrounding basement membrane and through the tendon and into the bone is as im portant as the contraction itself. Cell adhesion molecules are thought to provide the link between the muscle cell interior and the environment, both as a means of transferring signals from the outside into the cell as well as maintaining the structural integrity o f skeletal muscle upon repeated contraction. But this also leaves the muscle susceptible to inherited or spontaneously occurring mutations in genes o f transmembrane spanning com plexes. Integrins and the dystrophin-glycoprotein complex are known to be crucial in this connection and most o f what is known about their function in skeletal muscle development and in the adult has been learned in recent years through the targeted inactivation o f the genes in embryonic stem cells.
