Revive: Short Films on Stem Cells

Skeletal Muscles

To understand how the muscle stem cells (satellite cells) repair the muscle fibers the Institut Pasteur and the LabExRevive takes us inside the skeletal muscles. We have created five different videos to show different stages of the skeletal muscle from homeostasis to repair in different contexts. The different videos can be looked separately or one after the other, they are short and instructive.

This animation shows the composition of the skeletal muscle and how the voluntary movement in our bodies work. It shows the different layers that constitute a skeletal muscle in detail, it could be useful to look at this video before the others to understand the functioning of satellite cells in a repair context.

Following damage to the muscle fiber, nearby quiescent muscle stem cells (satellite cells) activate to restore the muscle integrity.

When massive injury occurs in the skeletal muscle, for example after a snake bite, muscle stem cells (satellite cells), engage in the regeneration process. Residual debris are removed by the macrophages and new muscle fibers are generated within the collagen matrix of the pre-existing basement membranes.

During disease, chronic regeneration occurs and the majority of the satellite cells remain active in order to repair the continuous damage to the muscle cells.

Neurogenesis

The brain has a remarkable ability to learn how to discriminate different stimuli. This video shows the work that is done within the LabEx Revive framework (www.revive.fr) in the laboratory directed by Prof. Pierre-Marie Lledo. Using mice and stem cells as a model, they have shown how adult neurogenesis is decreased or stimulated depending on different factors.