Description
The skeletal muscle growth and development is a very complicated but precisely regulated process with interwoven molecular mechanisms. Skeletal muscle is a very heterogeneous tissue that is made up of a large variety of functionally diverse fiber types. Muscle mass is therefore largely determined by the number and size of those fibres. These fibre characteristics are determined by hyperplasia before birth and by hypertrophy after. Around 65 dpc and three postnatal stages (newborn, 3 days; young, 60 days; and mature, 120 days) are key time points in swine skeletal muscle growth and development.