Background Epithelial cells of developing embryonic organs such as salivary glands

Background Epithelial cells of developing embryonic organs such as salivary glands can display substantial motility during branching morphogenesis. rate of migration was stimulated by inhibiting E-cadherin. Conclusions Cell motility in developing salivary glands was highest in cells in contact with the basement membrane. The basement membrane-associated motility of these outer bud cells depended on integrins and myosin II but not E-cadherin. In contrast motility of inner bud cells was restrained by E-cadherin. These findings identify the importance of integrin-dependent basement membrane association for the morphology tissue business and lateral motility of morphogenetic epithelial cells. lungs (Metzger and Krasnow 1999 Shakya et al. 2005 Epithelial cells of the kidney appear to have relatively modest levels of motility (Shakya et al. 2005 whereas Butein the epithelial cells of salivary and mammary glands can show marked levels of migratory movement during branching morphogenesis (Larsen et al. 2006 Ewald et al. Rabbit Polyclonal to GNB5. 2008 A number of growth factors such as HGF and FGF that are implicated in cell migration in other model developmental systems are expressed in developing glands but their contribution to individual cell motility is not known (for example observe Larsen et al. 2010 These cell movements during branching morphogenesis have been suggested to contribute to the plasticity of tissues during the quick architectural rearrangements of early organ formation. There is however only limited information available about the patterns of movement of individual cells at different regions of developing mammalian organs. Developing salivary and mammary glands display considerable cell motility as characterized by time-lapse confocal imaging (Larsen et al. 2006 Ewald et al. 2008 In developing mammary gland the motility entails both collective and individual cell migration (Ewald et al. 2008 Ewald et al. 2012 In developing salivary glands increased separation Butein between individual cells Butein located at the base of deepening clefts that delineate branching end buds is usually associated with a Btbd7 signaling pathway necessary for cleft formation (Onodera et al. 2010 The motion of GFP-labeled cells elsewhere in the developing salivary gland was visualized by infecting cells with a GFP-encoding adenovirus and appeared to be relatively random and autonomous (Larsen et al. 2006 Preliminary comparisons of movements of adenovirus-infected cells or cells moving out of a single optical plane suggest that the outer bud cells may be more motile (Larsen et al. 2006 Kadoya and Yamashina 2010 The epithelial cell motility that occurs transiently during salivary gland branching morphogenesis is usually developmentally regulated and it ceases when glands mature to form the stable epithelial cell-cell adhesions characteristic of adult organisms (e.g. observe Hieda et al. 1996 Larsen et al. 2006 In fact the cell-cell adhesion complexes that comprise the classical adherens tight and desmosome-based junctions of very early epithelia are lost when oral epithelial cells undergo branching morphogenesis to form buds (Kadoya and Yamashina 1993 Hieda et al. 1996 In developing mammary glands adherens and tight junctions also appear to be lost during branching morphogenesis although desmosomes remain (Ewald et al. 2012 These types of developmentally regulated transient losses of cell-cell adhesive tissue integrity are likely to be important to permit quick cell rearrangements and epithelial cell migratory movements. Nevertheless a number of major unanswered questions still remain concerning individual epithelial cell motility during branching morphogenesis. They include questions about whether you will find systematic differences in rates and patterns of cell movement at different sites in developing organs the relationship of cell motility to the basement membrane and the functions of integrins cadherins and the actomyosin cytoskeleton in these embryonic epithelial cell movements. RESULTS Cell Highlighting System for Tracking Individual Cell Movements in 3D Branching morphogenesis of the salivary gland is usually a highly dynamic process in which a single bud undergoes repetitive subdivision Butein by clefts and branching to generate large numbers of buds (Movie 1). Although previous studies have used adenovirus contamination of individual cells to track movements of salivary and mammary gland cells during this process of.