茂县土地岭大熊猫走廊带 - 武汉病毒所.doc

From Minu3D cultural system to aldosterone-induced tubulogenesis***☆◆ Hu Kang-hong Abstract: The existing technical disadvantages of culture systems so far developed have limited the molecular biological study of tubulogenesis. Recently, a newly developed Minu3D system creates controllable growth conditions and allows the generation of tubules from renal stem/progenitor cells. It is for the first time indicated that aldosterone is able to induce the formation of tubules. Aldosterone may trigger some of mineralocorticoid receptor-mediated signaling pathways for the initiation and the regulation of the tubulogenesis. The implication of these studies toward unveiling tubulogenesis is discussed.   INTRODUCTION In the growing mammalian embryonic kidney, ureteric bud (UB) that extends out from a pre-existing epithelial tube, gives rise to the branched collecting duct system while the surrounding metanephric mesenchyme undergoes mesenchymal-epithelial transition to form the proximal parts of the nephron. Tubulogenesis, a process by which disorganised mesenchymal cells become a highly organised epithelial tubule, can be summarily divided into four developmental stages [1]. ①Condensation, in which groups of undifferentiated mesenchymal cells condense tightly together to form a distinct mass; ② Epithelisation, in which condensed cells lose their mesenchymal characteristics and gain epithelial ones. At the end of this period they have formed a small epithelial cyst complete with a basement membrane, cell-cell tight junctions and a defined apico-basal polarity; ③Early morphogenesis, in which the cyst invaginates twice to form a comma and then an S-shaped body, one of these invagination sites later becoming the glomerular cleft. ④Tubule maturation, in which the specialized transporting segments of nephron differentiate. In this stage, tubules grow and extend in a straightforward, a convoluting or a branching manner to form the three-dimensional structures. Observing the event