Dedifferentiation and Musculoskeletal Repair and Regeneration

Abstract

The majority of musculoskeletal diseases do not cause high mortality rate in patients as cancer and cardiovascular disease do. Rather, degeneration and injury of articulate bone and skeletal muscle would pose a grave threat to the quality of life. Adult articular cartilage possesses an extremely low self-regeneration ability owing to its avascular nature. Articular cartilage surface’s regeneration is decisive to inhibit the progression to osteoarthritis. Besides, osteogenesis deprives from mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) differentiating into mature osteoblasts and bone formation’s each period is inseparable from assorted biological molecules’ delicate regulation. Of note, understanding the sophisticated circuit between osteogenic homeostasis and underlying mechanism is of tremendous value for artificial skeletal regeneration for severe bone defects. Adult skeletal muscle regenerates upon practice, muscle trauma, or degeneration. Satellite cells are muscle-resident stem cells and play substantive functions in regeneration and muscle development. Muscle regeneration recapitulates muscle development’s process in a large number of facets. In certain muscle diseases, heterotopic ossification or ectopic calcification, as well as fibrosis and adipogenesis, takes place in skeletal muscle. The author focuses on the issue of chondrocyte dedifferentiation, autologous chondrocyte transplantation, bone regeneration, and osteoblast and myotube dedifferentiation and compares and illustrates the difference of regenerative capacity between zebrafish, amphibians, and mammals. Specifically, molecular mechanisms of chondrocyte dedifferentiation and myotube dedifferentiation in distinct conditions are described in detail.