Sox2+ adult stem/progenitor cells are important for tissue regeneration and survival of mice

By Katrin Arnold, Abby Sarkar, Mary Anna Yram, J. Polo, R. Bronson, Sumitra Sengupta, M. Seandel, N. Geijsen, K. Hochedlinger. Cell Stem Cell, 2011

756 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Summary The transcription factor Sox2 maintains the pluripotency of early embryonic cells and regulates the formation of several epithelia during fetal development. Whether Sox2 continues to play a role in adult tissues remains largely unknown. We here show that Sox2 marks adult cells in several epithelial tissues where its expression has not previously been characterized, including the stomach, cervix, anus, testes, lens and multiple glands. Genetic lineage tracing and transplantation experiments demonstrate that Sox2-expressing cells continuously give rise to mature cell types within these tissues, documenting their self-renewal and differentiation potentials. Consistent with these findings, ablation of Sox2+ cells in mice results in a disruption of epithelial tissue homeostasis and lethality. Developmental fate mapping reveals that Sox2+ adult stem cells originate from fetal Sox2+ tissue progenitors. Thus, our results identify Sox2 expression in numerous adult ectodermal and endodermal stem cell compartments, which are critical for normal tissue regeneration and survival.

Subfields: Molecular Biology, Surgery

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/72f62bdeab38beb8caafbb9110e1c3aa7c2589ac

Citations in the corpus

• The Sox Family of Transcription Factors: Versatile Regulators of Stem and Progenitor Cell Fate (2013, neutral): “More recently, lineage-tracing experiments from our laboratory and others have demonstrated that immature Sox2+ cells in the adult testes, forestomach, glandular stomach, trachea, anus, cervix, esophagus, lens, and dental epithelium give rise to all mature cell types within these tissues (Arnold et ”