Open Access

ARTICLE

High passage numbers induce resistance to apoptosis in C2C12 muscle cells

LUCIA PRONSATO, ANABELA LA COLLA, ANA CAROLINA RONDA, LORENA MILANESI, RICARDO BOLAND, ANDREA VASCONSUELO^*

Departamento de Biología, Bioquímica y Farmacia, Universidad Nacional del Sur. San Juan 670, 8000 Bahía Blanca, Argentina

* Address correspondence to: Andrea Vasconsuelo. Departamento de Biología, Bioquímica y Farmacia. Universidad Nacional del Sur. San Juan 670, 8000 Bahía Blanca. Argentina. E-mail: Received: September 17, 2012.

BIOCELL 2013, 37(1), 1-9. https://doi.org/10.32604/biocell.2013.37.001

Abstract

Cell lines with high passage numbers exhibit alterations in cell morphology and functions. In the present work, C2C12 skeletal muscle cells with either low (<20) or high (>60) passage numbers (identified as lC2C12 or h-C2C12, respectively) were used to investigate the apoptotic response to H2 O2 as a function of culture age h-C2C12. We found that older cultures (h-C2C12 group) were depleted of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). When we analyzed the behavior of Bad, Bax, caspase-3 and mitochondrial transmembrane potential, we observed that cells in the h-C2C12 group were resistant to H2 O2 induction of apoptosis. We propose serially cultured C2C12 cells as a refractory model to H2 O2 -induced apoptosis. In addition, the data obtained in this work suggest that mtDNA is required for apoptotic cell death in skeletal muscle C2C12 cells.

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