Whole-mount Staining of Mouse Diaphragm Neuromuscular Junctions

Rula Sha; Zhenzhen Wang; Xue You; Yuguo Liu; Zhiqin Xie; Ying Feng

doi:10.21769/BioProtoc.4215

Whole-mount Staining of Mouse Diaphragm Neuromuscular Junctions

Bio Protoc. 2021 Nov 5;11(21):e4215. doi: 10.21769/BioProtoc.4215.

Authors

Rula Sha¹, Zhenzhen Wang¹, Xue You², Yuguo Liu¹, Zhiqin Xie¹, Ying Feng^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ CAS Key Laboratory of Nutrition, Metabolism and Food Safety, Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China.
² Collaborative Innovation Center for Birth Defect Research and Transformation of Shandong Province, Jining Medical University, Jining, China.

Abstract

The neuromuscular junction (NMJ) is a specialized synapse that connects the terminal end of a motor neuron and a skeletal muscle fiber. Defects in NMJ cause abnormalities of neuromuscular transmission, leading to NMJ disorders. The mammalian diaphragm muscle is essential for respiration and has been widely used to study NMJ formation. Here, we provide a simple and straightforward protocol for preparing diaphragms from embryonic, neonatal, and adult mice and for subsequent NMJ staining.

Keywords: Diaphragm; Immunofluorescence; NMJ; Whole-mount staining.