Discovering Whale Muscle Cells: A New Way to Study Marine Life

Scientists have created something amazing - a cell line from the muscles of a male Cuvier's Beaked whale that washed up on the Italian coast. This is the first time such a cell line has been made in a lab. The team started by growing these cells and checking their growth rate, chromosomes, and proteins. They did this at different stages: T0, T2, and T4. At T0, the cells were undifferentiated, meaning they hadn't turned into specific muscle types yet. But by T2 and T4, they started to fuse together and form long, multinucleated myotubes, which are like tiny muscle fibers.

The cells doubled in number every 54 hours, and by T4, about 28% of them had fused. The whale cells had 42 chromosomes, including two pairs of nucleolus organizer regions. They also showed specific chromosome banding patterns and telomere regions. Some cells expressed proteins like β-actin, myosin, and vimentin, while others showed desmin, a protein found in muscle cells. This new cell line can help us understand how whale muscles work and could be useful for studying how polluted water affects marine life.

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