Embryo jigsaws

Transforming growth factor-beta-induced differentiation of smooth muscle from a neural crest stem cell line

During vascular development, nascent endothelial networks are invested with a layer of supporting cells called pericytes in capillaries or smooth muscle in larger vessels. The cellular lineage of smooth muscle precursors and factors responsible for regulating their differentiation remain uncertain. In vivo, cells derived from the multipotent neural crest can give rise to vascular smooth muscle in parts of the head and also the cardiac outflow tract. Although transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta) has previously been shown to induce some smooth muscle markers from primary cultures of neural crest stem cells, the extent of the differentiation induced was not clear. In this study, we demonstrate that TGF-beta can induce many of the markers and characteristics of vascular smooth muscle from a neural crest stem cell line, Monc-1. Within 3 days of in vitro treatment, TGF-beta induces multiple smooth muscle-specific markers, while downregulating epithelial markers present on the parent cells. Treatment with TGF-beta also induces a contractile phenotype that responds to the muscarinic agonist carbachol and is not immediately reversed on TGF-beta withdrawal. Examination of the signaling pathways involved revealed that TGF-beta activation of Smad2 and Smad3 appear to be essential for the observed differentiation. Taken together, this system provides a novel model of smooth muscle differentiation that reliably recapitulates the process observed in vivo and allows for dissection of the pathways and processes involved in this process.

Ultrasound biomicroscopy-Doppler in mouse cardiovascular development

The ability to modify the mouse genome has yielded new insights into the genetic control of mammalian cardiovascular development. However, it is far less understood how genetic factors and their consequent structural changes alter cardiovascular function, a void largely due to the lack of effective noninvasive techniques to assess function in the developing mouse cardiovascular system. In this review, we discuss the recent advances in ultrasound biomicroscopy (UBM)-Doppler echocardiography for analyzing cardiovascular function in the embryonic mouse in utero. "Cardiovascular function" encompasses broad aspects of physiology, including systolic and diastolic cardiac function, distribution of blood flow among various embryonic vascular beds, and vascular bed properties (impedance). A wide range of physiological measurements is possible using UBM-Doppler, but it is clear that the limitations of any single measurement warrant a multi-parameter approach to characterizing cardiovascular function. We further discuss the prospects for UBM-Doppler analysis of alternative vertebrate systems increasingly studied in developmental biology. The ability to correlate cardiovascular physiological phenotypes with their corresponding genotypes should lead to the elucidation of mechanisms underlying normal development, as well as embryonic disease and death.