The Growth and Composition of Skeletal Muscle in the Chicken

Abstract

THE relationship of cell size and cell number to muscle weight has been studied in the chicken embryo by Blunn and Gregory (1935) and in the hatched chick by Mehner (1938) and Smith (1963). The results of these investigations indicate that there is an increase in the number of cells during embryonic growth, but that it is unlikely that there is any increase in the number of cells (fibres) after hatching. However, since striated muscle fibres are multi-nucleated, this does not imply that nuclear division does not occur in the skeletal muscle of the growing chicken. The present study was therefore undertaken to investigate the relationship between nuclear division and growth of the breast muscle between hatching and 28 days of age. It has been demonstrated by a number of workers that the mean amount of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) per nucleus of the somatic cells is constant for individual species…