TY - JOUR
T1 - Smooth muscle
T2 - A stiff sculptor of epithelial shapes
AU - Jaslove, Jacob M.
AU - Nelson, Celeste M.
N1 - Funding Information:
Data accessibility. This article has no additional data. Authors’ contributions. Both authors participated in drafting and editing the manuscript and approved the final version. Competing interests. We have no competing interests. Funding. Work from the authors’ group was supported, in part, by grants from the NIH (HL110335, HL118532, HL120142 and CA187692), the NSF (CMM1-1435853), the David & Lucile Packard Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. J.M.J. was supported in part by an NIH NRSA Fellowship (F30 HL139039). C.M.N. was supported, in part, by a Faculty Scholars Award from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Funding Information:
Work from the authors’ group was supported, in part, by grants from the NIH (HL110335, HL118532, HL120142 and CA187692), the NSF (CMM1-1435853), the David & Lucile Packard Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation and the Burroughs Well-come Fund. J.M.J. was supported in part by an NIH NRSA Fellowship (F30 HL139039). C.M.N. was supported, in part, by a Faculty Scholars Award from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 The Author(s).
PY - 2018
Y1 - 2018
N2 - Smooth muscle is increasingly recognized as a key mechanical sculptor of epithelia during embryonic development. Smooth muscle is a mesenchymal tissue that surrounds the epithelia of organs including the gut, blood vessels, lungs, bladder, ureter, uterus, oviduct and epididymis. Smooth muscle is stiffer than its adjacent epithelium and often serves its morphogenetic function by physically constraining the growth of a proliferating epithelial layer. This constraint leads to mechanical instabilities and epithelial morphogenesis through buckling. Smooth muscle stiffness alone, without smooth muscle cell shortening, seems to be sufficient to drive epithelial morphogenesis. Fully understanding the development of organs that use smooth muscle stiffness as a driver of morphogenesis requires investigating how smooth muscle develops, a key aspect of which is distinguishing smooth muscle-like tissues from one another in vivo and in culture. This necessitates a comprehensive appreciation of the genetic, anatomical and functional markers that are used to distinguish the different subtypes of smooth muscle (for example, vascular versus visceral) from similar cell types (including myofibroblasts and myoepithelial cells). Here, we review how smooth muscle acts as a mechanical driver of morphogenesis and discuss ways of identifying smooth muscle, which is critical for understanding these morphogenetic events. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue ‘Mechanics of Development’.
AB - Smooth muscle is increasingly recognized as a key mechanical sculptor of epithelia during embryonic development. Smooth muscle is a mesenchymal tissue that surrounds the epithelia of organs including the gut, blood vessels, lungs, bladder, ureter, uterus, oviduct and epididymis. Smooth muscle is stiffer than its adjacent epithelium and often serves its morphogenetic function by physically constraining the growth of a proliferating epithelial layer. This constraint leads to mechanical instabilities and epithelial morphogenesis through buckling. Smooth muscle stiffness alone, without smooth muscle cell shortening, seems to be sufficient to drive epithelial morphogenesis. Fully understanding the development of organs that use smooth muscle stiffness as a driver of morphogenesis requires investigating how smooth muscle develops, a key aspect of which is distinguishing smooth muscle-like tissues from one another in vivo and in culture. This necessitates a comprehensive appreciation of the genetic, anatomical and functional markers that are used to distinguish the different subtypes of smooth muscle (for example, vascular versus visceral) from similar cell types (including myofibroblasts and myoepithelial cells). Here, we review how smooth muscle acts as a mechanical driver of morphogenesis and discuss ways of identifying smooth muscle, which is critical for understanding these morphogenetic events. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue ‘Mechanics of Development’.
KW - Buckling morphogenesis
KW - Differentiation markers
KW - Embryology
KW - Mechanical instability
KW - Mesenchyme
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U2 - 10.1098/rstb.2017.0318
DO - 10.1098/rstb.2017.0318
M3 - Review article
C2 - 30249770
AN - SCOPUS:85054151155
SN - 0962-8436
VL - 373
JO - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
JF - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
IS - 1759
M1 - 20170318
ER -