A Transgenic Line That Reports CSF1R Protein Expression Provides a Definitive Marker for the Mouse Mononuclear Phagocyte System.

The proliferation, differentiation, and survival of cells of the mononuclear phagocyte system (MPS; progenitors, monocytes, macrophages, and classical dendritic cells) are controlled by signals from the M-CSF receptor (CSF1R). Cells of the MPS lineage have been identified using numerous surface markers and transgenic reporters, but none is both universal and lineage restricted. In this article, we report the development and characterization of a CSF1R reporter mouse.

Osteocalcin Regulates Arterial Calcification Via Altered Wnt Signaling and Glucose Metabolism.

Arterial calcification is an important hallmark of cardiovascular disease and shares many similarities with skeletal mineralization. The bone-specific protein osteocalcin (OCN) is an established marker of vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) osteochondrogenic transdifferentiation and a known regulator of glucose metabolism. However, the role of OCN in controlling arterial calcification is unclear.

Deducing the stage of origin of Wilms' tumours from a developmental series of Wt1-mutant mice.

Wilms' tumours, paediatric kidney cancers, are the archetypal example of tumours caused through the disruption of normal development. The genetically best-defined subgroup of Wilms' tumours is the group caused by biallelic loss of the WT1 tumour suppressor gene. Here, we describe a developmental series of mouse models with conditional loss of Wt1 in different stages of nephron development before and after the mesenchymal-to-epithelial transition (MET).

Size doesn't matter; in the stroma, little things make all the difference.

In recent years there has been an increase in the number of studies into the role of stromal cells and microRNAs (miRNAs) in kidney development. Nakagawa et al. combine the two in a study of a stromal cell-specific knockout of Dicer1.

Wt1 in the kidney--a tale in mouse models.

The WT1 gene was originally identified through its involvement in the development of Wilms tumours. The gene is characterized by a plethora of different isoforms with, in some cases, clearly different functions in transcriptional control and RNA metabolism. Many different mouse models for Wt1 have already been generated, and these are increasingly providing new information on the molecular roles of Wt1 in normal development and disease.

Identification of human nephron progenitors capable of generation of kidney structures and functional repair of chronic renal disease.

Identification of tissue-specific renal stem/progenitor cells with nephrogenic potential is a critical step in developing cell-based therapies for renal disease. In the human kidney, stem/progenitor cells are induced into the nephrogenic pathway to form nephrons until the 34 week of gestation, and no equivalent cell types can be traced in the adult kidney. Human nephron progenitor cells (hNPCs) have yet to be isolated.

High-efficiency Rosa26 knock-in vector construction for Cre-regulated overexpression and RNAi.

Introduction: Rosa26 is a genomic mouse locus commonly used to knock-in cDNA constructs for ubiquitous or conditional gene expression in transgenic mice. However, the vectors generally used to generate Rosa26 knock-in constructs show instability problems, which have a severe impact on the efficiency of the system.

Results: We have optimized the cloning procedure to generate targeting vectors for Cre-regulated expression of constructs within several days with minimal hands-on time, thereby enabling high-throughput approaches.