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Omics · study · 2026

PAX3-SIX2 muscle stem cell heterogeneity drives muscle-specific repair dynamics diversification

Listed in NCBI GEO

The human body contains around 640 distinct muscles, each capable of regeneration following injury through the action of muscle-specific stem cells (MuSCs) that express the transcription factor PAX7.

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Its paralog, PAX3, a master regulator of embryonic myogenesis, is selectively expressed in a subset of adult quiescent MuSCs. The proportion of PAX3⁺ MuSCs varies across muscles.

By combining lineage tracing and skeletal muscle injury, we demonstrate that PAX3 drives MuSC diversity and muscle-specific regeneration rates. PAX3-expressing MuSCs display enhanced proliferation and differentiation capacities, enabling a faster response following injury, whereas loss of PAX3 leads to proliferation arrest and cell death. Single-cell RNA-sequencing analyses revealed the specific expression of Six2 in PAX3+ MuSCs.

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We show that PAX3 is required for SIX2 expression, and loss of SIX2 in MuSCs reduces proliferation and differentiation rates. Conversely, ectopic Six2 expression promotes a faster response in PAX3- MuSCs. With this work, we establish that PAX3/SIX2 expression correlates with distinct MuSCs behavior, influencing regeneration rates in a muscle-type-dependent context.

Our findings highlight a previously unrecognized layer of regulation in MuSCs behaviour and muscle repair and suggest that PAX3-SIX2 heterogeneity could be leveraged for targeted therapeutic strategies in muscle-wasting diseases.

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Provenance · 1 source records, 7 field assertions
SourceKeyLast seenRaw
NCBI GEOGSE30229214 d agoJSON v1
FieldAssertionExtractorEvidence
access_levelsource · NCBI GEOconnector:ncbi_geo@1.0.0
concepts[field].local:field:life-sciencesmapping · NCBI GEOconnector:ncbi_geo@1.0.0
concepts[method].geo_series_type:expression-profiling-by-high-throughput-sequencingsource · NCBI GEOconnector:ncbi_geo@1.0.0/gdstype
concepts[organism].NCBITaxon:10090source · NCBI GEOconnector:ncbi_geo@1.0.0/taxon
descriptionsource · NCBI GEOconnector:ncbi_geo@1.0.0/summary
publication_datesource · NCBI GEOconnector:ncbi_geo@1.0.0
titlesource · NCBI GEOconnector:ncbi_geo@1.0.0/title