Graduate School of Human Development and Environment, Kobe University, Kobe, 657-8501, Japan.
J Biol Dyn. 2010 May;4(3):248-57. doi: 10.1080/17513750903045635.
We study the proliferation and differentiation of stem cells in the Drosophila posterior midgut epithelium, which mainly consists of intestinal stem cells (ISCs); semi-differentiated cells, i.e. enteroblasts (EBs); and two types of fully differentiated cells, i.e. enteroendocrine cells (EEs) and enterocytes (ECs). The cellular system of ISCs is controlled by Wnt and Notch signalling pathways. In this article, we experimentally show that EBs are not capable of efficiently differentiating into ECs in the absence of Wnt signalling. On the basis of the experimental results and known facts, we propose a scheme and a simple ordinary differential equation (ODE) model for the proliferation and differentiation of ISCs. This is a first step towards understanding the universal mechanism for the maintenance of the cellular system of tissue stem cells controlled by signalling pathways.
我们研究了果蝇后肠上皮细胞中的干细胞增殖和分化，该组织主要由肠干细胞（ISCs）、半分化细胞（即肠母细胞[EBs]）以及两种完全分化细胞（即肠内分泌细胞[EEs]和肠细胞[ECs]）组成。ISC 的细胞系统受 Wnt 和 Notch 信号通路的控制。在本文中，我们通过实验表明，在没有 Wnt 信号的情况下，EBs 不能有效地分化为 ECs。基于实验结果和已知事实，我们提出了一个方案和一个简单的常微分方程（ODE）模型，用于 ISCs 的增殖和分化。这是理解受信号通路控制的组织干细胞细胞系统的通用维持机制的第一步。
