Individual Blog Post #1

In this group project, our experiment is about to figure out the differences and similarities of heart and skeletal muscle among three animals that are cow, chicken and turkey. Our hypothesis is that muscles of animals that serve the same function will have more common proteins. By running gel and find the difference in number of proteins, size of proteins, and migrated distance of proteins, we are able to compare the muscles of these animals.

According to “Embryonic Chicken Skeletal, Cardiac, and Smooth Muscles Express a Common Embryo-specific Myosin Light Chain”, there is a relatedness between types of muscle in embryonic chicken. Thus, the same common light chain is expressed in these muscles and about to change as chicken embryo grows. We are going to experiment how proteins are expressed in cardiac muscle and skeletal muscle among chicken, turkey and cow. Furthermore, we want to see whether or not these muscles share common proteins.

Reference:

Takano, H., Obinata, T., Kawashima, M., Masaki, T., Tanaka, T. Embryonic chicken skeletal, cardiac, and smooth muscles express a common embryo-specific myosin light chain [Internet]. 1985 [cited Feb 10 2017]. Available from http://jcb.rupress.org/content/jcb/100/6/2025.full.pdf