Mesenchymal proteases and tissue fluidity remodel the extracellular matrix during airway epithelial branching in the embryonic avian lung.

ABSTRACT: Reciprocal epithelial-mesenchymal signaling is essential for morphogenesis, including branching of the lung. In the mouse, mesenchymal cells differentiate into airway smooth muscle that wraps around epithelial branches, but this contractile tissue is absent from the early avian lung. Here, we have found that branching morphogenesis in the embryonic chicken lung requires extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling driven by reciprocal interactions between the epithelium and mesenchyme. Before branching, the basement membrane wraps the airway epithelium as a spatially uniform sheath. After branch initiation, however, the basement membrane thins at branch tips; this remodeling requires mesenchymal expression of matrix metalloproteinase 2, which is necessary for branch extension but for not branch i

SUBMITTER: Spurlin JW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6737900 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature