For the muscle fiber cross-sectional area, 10-μm thickness serial coronal cryosections from the mid-belly region of the TA muscle were air-dried, fixed in 4% paraformaldehyde solution for 5 min, and stained with wheat germ agglutinin, Alexa Fluor 488 conjugate (1:500; W11261, Thermo Fisher, Pittsburgh, PA, USA) and Hoechst (1:1,000; Roche).
Images were acquired with an Olympus virtual slide system VS110 (Olympus, Center Valley, USA) at 20× magnification and analyzed through Fiji (ImageJ) on 3–5 serial sections per animal. For the SDH staining, a systematic random sampling procedure was applied as described above. For the muscle fiber cross-sectional area and centralized nuclei, the entire TA or TB muscle section was analyzed with the MuscleJ plug-in of Fiji software, as previously described.141 (link)