Fibroblast growth factor 10 represses premature cell differentiation during establishment of the intestinal progenitor niche.

Spatio-temporal regulation of the balance between cell renewal and cell differentiation is of vital importance for embryonic development and adult homeostasis. Fibroblast growth factor signaling relayed from the mesenchyme to the epithelium is necessary for progenitor maintenance during organogenesis of most endoderm-derived organs, but it is still ambiguous whether the signal is exclusively mitogenic. Furthermore, the downstream mechanisms are largely unknown.

UPF2 is a critical regulator of liver development, function and regeneration.

Background: Nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) is a post-transcriptional RNA surveillance process that facilitates the recognition and destruction of mRNAs bearing premature terminations codons (PTCs). Such PTC-containing (PTC+) mRNAs may arise from different processes, including erroneous processing and expression of pseudogenes, but also from more regulated events such as alternative splicing coupled NMD (AS-NMD). Thus, the NMD pathway serves both as a silencer of genomic noise and a regulator of gene expression.

FGF10 maintains distal lung bud epithelium and excessive signaling leads to progenitor state arrest, distalization, and goblet cell metaplasia.

Background: Interaction with the surrounding mesenchyme is necessary for development of endodermal organs, and Fibroblast growth factors have recently emerged as mesenchymal-expressed morphogens that direct endodermal morphogenesis. The fibroblast growth factor 10 (Fgf10) null mouse is characterized by the absence of lung bud development. Previous studies have shown that this requirement for Fgf10 is due in part to its role as a chemotactic factor during branching morphogenesis.

FGF10 signaling controls stomach morphogenesis.

Maintenance of progenitor cell properties in development is required for proper organogenesis of most organs, including those derived from the endoderm. FGF10 has been shown to play a role in both lung and pancreatic development. Here we find that FGF10 signaling controls stomach progenitor maintenance, morphogenesis and cellular differentiation.

FGF10 signaling maintains the pancreatic progenitor cell state revealing a novel role of Notch in organ development.

FGF10 plays an important role in the morphogenesis of several tissues by control of mesenchymal-to-epithelial signaling. In the pancreas, mesenchymal FGF10 is required to maintain the Pdx1-expressing epithelial progenitor cell population, and in the absence of FGF10 signaling, these cells fail to proliferate. Ectopic expression of FGF10 in the pancreatic epithelium caused increased proliferation of pancreatic progenitor cells and abrogation of pancreatic cell differentiation of all cell types.