Ontogeny of insulin binding during chick skeletal myogenesis in vitro.

Our studies show that insulin receptors exist on chicken skeletal muscle cells at all developmental stages in culture. ¹²⁵I-labeled insulin binding at physiological concentrations to mature myotubes demonstrated saturability, binding proportional to cell number, reversibility, and specificity by competition with native hormone which reduced specific binding by 40% with 1 ng/ml and was maximal with 10 μg/ml. Further evidence for specificity was shown by no competition of insulin specific binding with insulin A chain, insulin B chain, growth hormone, and thyrotropin. Two binding sites were detected, with affinity constants of 10¹⁰M^?1 and 2 × 10⁹M^?1. The hormone receptor complex showed rapid dissociation (70% in 30 min) after equilibrium binding. During myogenesis, an increase in insulin receptors occurs from 500 per proliferating myoblast to 3000 per cell equivalent in mature (6 day) myotubes. Since these studies demonstrate that insulin receptors are present and other studies have shown that insulin is present during most of chicken embryogenesis, insulin may regulate muscle development in vivo to a greater degree than previously suspected.