Loss of the laminin α2 chain in LAMA2-related muscular dystrophy patients and mutant mice leads to a compensatory upregulation of laminin α4, which binds only weakly to dystroglycan and integrin α7β1, and does not effectively autopolymerize (Patton et al., 1997; Ringelmann et al., 1999; Colognato and Yurchenco, 2000; Talts et al., 2000; von der Mark et al., 2002; Reinhard et al., 2017). Here, LAMA2 is linked to muscular dystrophy.