The expression of nestin identifies skeletal muscle progenitor cells in developing rat esophagus
Date Issued
2008
Date
2008
Author(s)
Wang, Tung-Cheng
Abstract
During the esophageal myogenesis in rodent, the muscularis externa is initially composed of smooth muscle cells which are later replaced by the skeletal muscle in a craniocaudal progression. However, the ontology of the esophageal skeletal muscle has not been clearly understood. For the past decade, the origin of esophageal skeletal muscle has been proposed as two mechanisms: the smooth-to-skeletal muscle cell transdifferentiation and the cell differentiation of distinct skeletal muscle precursors. This issue remains controversial with respect to the existence of esophageal skeletal muscle precursors. In the present study, we used the immunostaining of nestin, a marker for myogenic progenitors, to identify the presence of esophageal myogenic precursors. The results showed that nestin was not only expressed in skeletal muscle precursors but in smooth muscle precursors as well. However, the temporal expression patterns are different in that the nestin expression of smooth muscle lineage disappeared early in differentiated cells, whereas the nestin of skeletal muscle lineage was expressed throughout the late fetal development and coincidently labeled with two markers for skeletal muscle cell differentiation, MyoD and skeletal muscle myosin heavy chain. In addition, the cell phenotypes of different developing stages in both smooth and skeletal muscle lineages were determined by immunotyping approach with nestin, smooth muscle α-actin, and the two skeletal muscle markers. Moreover, no mixed phenotype of cells expressing both smooth and skeletal muscle-specific proteins was detected, as would be expected in transdifferentiation mechanism. Finally, BrdU incorporation analysis revealed that the nestin-immunoreactive skeletal muscle precursors had high proliferation potential and suggested that they were the source of developing esophageal skeletal muscle cells. Taken together, we identified the esophageal skeletal muscle precursor cells by immunoreactivity of nestin and provided evidence for the distinct differentiation pathways for each muscle type in rat esophageal myogenesis.
Subjects
nestin
immunotyping
muscle precursors
esophageal myogenesis
transdifferentation
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Loading...
Name
ntu-97-R93b43006-1.pdf
Size
23.32 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum
(MD5):f850ec50bef3aaf7678a690e339a317c