... various pharmacological inhibitors and BAPX1 gene overexpression in vivo . We found that the enteric nervous system determines the onset of the synchronized contractions in the stomach. Moreover, alteration of smooth muscle fiber organization led to an impairment of this functional activity. Altogether...

...Jennifer Kurz; Anna-Carina Weiss; Hauke Thiesler; Fairouz Qasrawi; Lena Deuper; Jaskiran Kaur; Carsten Rudat; Timo H. Lüdtke; Irina Wojahn; Herbert Hildebrandt; Mark-Oliver Trowe; Andreas Kispert ABSTRACT The contractile phenotype of smooth muscle cells (SMCs) is transcriptionally controlled...

... Morphogen gradients Mechanical stress Smooth muscle The airways of the lung develop as relatively wide, single-layered epithelial tubes that form lateral branches and bifurcations. Branching of the mammalian lung epithelium is guided by molecular and physical signals from the surrounding...

...Melinda Snitow; MinMin Lu; Lan Cheng; Su Zhou; Edward E. Morrisey During development, the lung mesoderm generates a variety of cell lineages, including airway and vascular smooth muscle. Epigenetic changes in adult lung mesodermal lineages are thought to contribute towards diseases...

...Mary Redmond Hutson; Xiaopei Lily Zeng; Andrew J. Kim; Emily Antoon; Stephen Harward; Margaret L. Kirby During heart development, a subpopulation of cells in the heart field maintains cardiac potential over several days of development and forms the myocardium and smooth muscle of the arterial pole...

... in undifferentiated smooth muscle (SM) progenitors, but was downregulated in differentiating SM cells (SMCs) and had disappeared by E18.5. In Six1 –/– mice, the ureteral mesenchymal precursors failed to condense and differentiate into normal SMCs and showed increased cell death, indicating that Six1 is required...

... or on paraffin-embedded sections after quenching endogenous peroxidase and antigen retrieval followed by reaction with secondary antibodies (details available on request). Whole explants were blocked in 5% goat serum/PBS/0.3% Triton X-100 then incubated with mouse anti-smooth muscle α actin (SMAA; Sigma, clone...

... the contribution of these tissues to the bladder and external genitalia. We discovered that development of smooth muscle myosin-positive embryonic bladder mesenchyme requires Shh signaling,and that the bladder mesenchyme and dorsal (upper) external genitalia derive from Shh-responsive peri-cloacal mesenchyme. Thus...

... cardiovascular development, myocardin is the earliest known marker specific to both the cardiac and smooth muscle lineages during embryogenesis. To understand how the expression of this early transcriptional regulator is initiated and maintained, we scanned 90 kb of genomic DNA encompassing the myocardin gene...

... is predominantly in the hypaxial somite, adjacent to labelled smooth muscle cells in the aorta. Analysis of Pax3 GFP/+ embryos shows that these cells are Pax3 negative but GFP positive, with fluorescent cells in the intervening region between the aorta and the somite. This is consistent with the direct migration...

...Eric M. Small; Andrew S. Warkman; Da-Zhi Wang; Lillian B. Sutherland; Eric N. Olson; Paul A. Krieg Myocardin is a cardiac- and smooth muscle-specific cofactor for the ubiquitous transcription factor serum response factor (SRF). Using gain-of-function approaches in the Xenopus embryo, we show...

... to compensate for the loss of Hand1 . The most striking aspect of the vascular defect in Hand1 mutant yolk sacs is the abnormal distribution of smooth muscle cells. During normal angiogenesis,vascular smooth muscle precursors are recruited to the peri-endothelial tissue before differentiation, however, in Hand1...

..., regulates the timing of differentiation of smooth muscle progenitor cells, and sets the pattern of mesenchymal differentiation through its dose-dependent inhibition of smooth muscle formation. In addition, we also show that bone morphogenetic protein 4 is a downstream target gene of sonic hedgehog signaling...

...Axel A. Thomson; Barry G. Timms; Lesley Barton; Gerald R. Cunha; Oliver C. Grace We have examined the role that smooth muscle plays during prostatic organogenesis and propose that differentiation of a smooth muscle layer regulates prostatic induction by controlling mesenchymal/epithelial...

... neural crest cells. During gut organogenesis, the mesenchyme differentiates into distinct concentric layers around the endodermal epithelium forming the lamina propria, muscularis mucosae, submucosa and lamina muscularis (the smooth muscle layer). The smooth muscle layer and enteric plexus are formed...

...Andrew D. Chalmers; Jonathan M. W. Slack ABSTRACT We have produced a comprehensive fate map showing where the organs of the gut and respiratory system are derived from in the early Xenopus laevis endoderm. We also show the origin of the associated smooth muscle layer on a separate fate map...

...Yan Yang; Nand K. Relan; Dennis A. Przywara; Lucia Schuger ABSTRACT Undifferentiated embryonic mesenchymal cells are round/cuboidal in shape. During development, visceral myogenesis is shortly preceded by mesenchymal cell elongation. To determine the role of the cell’s shape on smooth muscle...

...Kimiko Fukuda; Yoko Tanigawa; Gen Fujii; Sadao Yasugi; Setsuo Hirohashi ABSTRACT During embryogenesis, smooth muscle cells of the gut differentiate from mesenchymal cells derived from splanchnic mesoderm. We have isolated a gene involved in the differentiation of smooth muscle cells in the gut...

..., but is required for maintenance of expression. These clustered hox genes have been shown to play a role in anteroposterior patterning in the female reproductive tract. In addition to this global posterior shift in the female reproductive tract, we note that the uterine smooth muscle is disorganized, indicating...

...Yan Yang; Kenneth C. Palmer; Nand Relan; Clement Diglio; Lucia Schuger ABSTRACT Undifferentiated mesenchymal cells were isolated from mouse embryonic lungs and plated at subconfluent and confluent densities. During the first 5 hours in culture, all the cells were negative for smooth muscle markers...