Muscle satellite cells have been widely studied, especially to understand their mechanism of action in muscle regeneration and correspondent implications in the different dystrophic processes, aiming the identification of potential therapeutic targets. Two mice models for muscular dystrophies, Large^myd and Lama2^dy2j/J, have a pattern of an intense and very similar degeneration, but with differences in the expression of genes involved in the regeneration cascade. Therefore, they are interesting models to study possible differences in the mechanism of activation and action of satellite cells in the dystrophic muscle. The main objectives of this project are: 1) to isolate and characterize by flow cytometry, populations of satellite cells from Large^myd and Lama2^dy2j/J models, as compared to normal C57Black6, evaluating the presence of myogenic and pluripotent stem cells markers; and 2) to study and compare gene expression profiles of these populations of satellite cells using microarray technique. In the phenotypic characterization of cells harvested from normal muscle, both faster (PP1) and slower (PP2) populations to adhere in culture flasks show similar phenotypic characteristics, which were closer to myogenic phenotype. On the other hand, the population of cells with very delayed adhesion ability (PP6) presented a mixed pattern, maintaining the myogenic characteristics, but associated to positive mesenchymal stem cell´s markers, suggesting a phenotype of more immature cells. In dystrophic muscles, we could identify differences in the constitution of the first pool of cells present in the Lama2^dy2j/J muscle where there is evidence of a population in proliferative stage, while in the Large^myd strain, we found more immature cells. Gene expression profile in the characterized populations showed consistent concordance with the cellular phenotypes assessed by flow citometry. In both dystrophic models, we identified down-regulated genes related to regeneration and remodeling of the muscle. Considering only the genes differently expressed in each dystrophic model, data suggest the activation of cell proliferation and inhibition of differentiation pathways in Lama2^dy2j/J strain and altered myogenesis in the Large^myd model. Thus, we identified important altered pathways in each of the dystrophic models that could explain most of the differences in gene expression profile in the muscle, described in our previous work