Comparative histochemistry of a flatfish fin muscle and of other vertebrate muscles used for ultrastructural studies

Abstract

Because of the high degree of filament order in the myofibrils of fish skeletal muscles, and the resulting usefulness of such preparations (particularly flatfish fin muscles) in structural studies of muscular contraction, the fibre type composition of plaice fin muscle has been determined by conventional histochemical tests. As controls, and for comparison, fibre type distributions have also been studied in several other vertebrate skeletal muscles which are widely used for ultrastructural and mechanical studies. In view of the importance of single fibres in such studies and because much of the published information on fibre types is rather difficult to collate, we summarize here the fibre compositions of several muscles; comparable enzyme tests have been carried out on cryostat sections of rabbit psoas muscle, frog sartorius and semitendinosus muscles and plaice fin muscles. On this basis all four muscles are composed of more than one fibre type. We confirm that frog sartorius muscle is mainly a random mixture of two fast fibre types and show that there is also a third group of fibres which are small, metabolically rich and dark under acid m-ATPase tests. We confirm that the semitendinosus is composed of three fibre types, in three non-exclusive, concentric regions and that rabbit psoas muscle contains a mixture of at least three fibre types. The principal new findings of this work are that plaice fin muscle can be divided into four regions, some of which are composed of more than one fibre type, on the basis of its histochemical reactions. This division into regions changes seasonally. The system of classification devised by Dubowitz & Brooke (1973) for mammalian muscle, and which can be applied approximately to frog muscle, can also be applied to the fibres of plaice fin muscle provided that the test for lactate dehydrogenase is carried out in the presence of polyvinyl alcohol. These fibres do not easily fit the division into red, white and intermediate types normally used for fish myotomal muscles. Since none of these muscles is homogeneous, their complex nature must be borne in mind if they are to be used satisfactorily in structural and mechanical studies of muscular contraction involving the use of single fibres.