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Published December 15, 1995 | public
Journal Article

Evidence for Developmentally Programmed Transdifferentiation in Mouse Esophageal Muscle

Abstract

Transdifferentiation is a relatively rare phenomenon in which cells of one differentiated type and function switch to a second discrete identity. In vertebrate embryos, smooth muscle and skeletal muscle are distinct tissues that arise from separate compartments of the mesoderm. The musculature of the mouse esophagus was found to undergo a conversion from smooth muscle in the fetus to skeletal muscle during early postnatal development. The switch from smooth to skeletal muscle features the transitory appearance of individual cells expressing a mixed phenotype, which suggests that this conversion is a result of programmed transdifferentiation.

Additional Information

© 1995 American Association for the Advancement of Science. Received 10 July 1995; accepted 6 November 1995. We thank X. Yu for her work on apoptosis. S. Fraser and K. Woo for imaging and lineage tracing assistance, W. Wright for myogenin mAb cell line F5D, N. Shah for antibodies, J. Miano and E. Olson for SMMHC plasmid, C. Cardell for technical assistance, and D. Anderson, P. Garrity, N. Hong, J. Miner, P. Mueller, P. Patterson, and members of Wold group for comments. Supported by NIH grant AR40708 to B.W. A.P. was supported by an NIH Predoctoral Training Grant.

Additional details

Created:
August 20, 2023
Modified:
October 18, 2023