High Sox2 expression predicts taste lineage competency of lingual progenitors in vitro.

Taste buds on the tongue contain taste receptor cells (TRCs) that detect sweet, sour, salty, umami and bitter stimuli. Like non-taste lingual epithelium, TRCs are renewed from basal keratinocytes, many of which express the transcription factor SOX2. Genetic lineage tracing has shown that SOX2+ lingual progenitors give rise to both taste and non-taste lingual epithelium in the posterior circumvallate taste papilla (CVP) of mice.

Onset of taste bud cell renewal starts at birth and coincides with a shift in SHH function.

Embryonic taste bud primordia are specified as taste placodes on the tongue surface and differentiate into the first taste receptor cells (TRCs) at birth. Throughout adult life, TRCs are continually regenerated from epithelial progenitors. Sonic hedgehog (SHH) signaling regulates TRC development and renewal, repressing taste fate embryonically, but promoting TRC differentiation in adults.

Generation and Culture of Lingual Organoids Derived from Adult Mouse Taste Stem Cells.

The sense of taste is mediated by taste buds on the tongue, which are composed of rapidly renewing taste receptor cells (TRCs). This continual turnover is powered by local progenitor cells and renders taste function prone to disruption by a multitude of medical treatments, which in turn severely impacts the quality of life. Thus, studying this process in the context of drug treatment is vital to understanding if and how taste progenitor function and TRC production are affected.

Fractionated head and neck irradiation impacts taste progenitors, differentiated taste cells, and Wnt/β-catenin signaling in adult mice.

Head and neck cancer patients receiving conventional repeated, low dose radiotherapy (fractionated IR) suffer from taste dysfunction that can persist for months and often years after treatment. To understand the mechanisms underlying functional taste loss, we established a fractionated IR mouse model to characterize how taste buds are affected. Following fractionated IR, we found as in our previous study using single dose IR, taste progenitor proliferation was reduced and progenitor cell number declined, leading to interruption in the supply of new taste receptor cells to taste buds.

Adaptive Evolution of to Ciprofloxacin in Controlled Stress Environments: Contrasting Patterns of Resistance in Spatially Varying versus Uniformly Mixed Concentration Conditions.

A microfluidic gradient chamber (MGC) and a homogeneous batch culturing system were used to evaluate whether spatial concentration gradients of the antibiotic ciprofloxacin allow development of greater antibiotic resistance in strain 307 ( 307) compared to exclusively temporal concentration gradients, as indicated in an earlier study. A linear spatial gradient of ciprofloxacin and Luria-Bertani broth (LB) medium was established and maintained by diffusion over 5 days across a well array in the MGC, with relative concentrations along the gradient of 1.7-7.