Cells that participate in regeneration of skeletal muscle.

Skeletal muscle is a post-mitotic tissue that is thought, conventionally to be maintained by repair and regeneration by a population of stem cell-like satellite cells. Recent findings have brought into question the extent to which these satellite cells represent a single homogeneous population and whether they are the only source of myogenic cells in mature muscle. It has been shown that myogenic cells can be derived from the bone marrow or from the supposedly post-mitotic nuclei of muscle fibres. However, neither of these sources has been demonstrated to generate more than a tiny proportion of muscle nuclei. It remains possible nonetheless that such mechanisms might be exploited for therapeutic uses in primary muscle disease.