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Thyroid hormone-induced expression of sonic hedgehog correlates with adult epithelial development during remodeling of the Xenopus stomach and intestine.
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Sonic hedgehog (Shh) was isolated from the Xenopus laevis intestine as an early thyroid hormone (TH) response gene. To investigate possible roles of TH-upregulated expression of Shh during metamorphosis, we raised a polyclonal antibody against Xenopus Shh and immunohistochemically examined the relationship between Shh expression and the larval-to-adult intestinal remodeling at the cellular level. Our results indicate that the epithelial-specific expression of Shh in the intestine spatiotemporally correlates well with active proliferation and/or initial differentiation of the secondary (adult) epithelial primordia that originate from stem cells, but not with apoptosis of the primary (larval) epithelium. Given the similar transformations of the stomach during metamorphosis, we also analyzed Shh expression in this organ and found similar correlations in the stomach, although the position of the adult epithelial primordia and their final differentiation in the stomach are different from those in the intestine. Furthermore, we show here that Shh expression is organ-autonomously induced by TH and its correlation with the adult epithelial development is reproduced in vitro in both the intestine and the stomach. More importantly, addition of recombinant Shh protein to the culture medium results in developmental anomalies of both organs. However, differentiation of the adult epithelium is more severely inhibited by exogenous Shh in the intestine than in the stomach. These results suggest that TH-upregulated expression of Shh plays important roles in the postembryonic gastrointestinal remodeling, but its roles are at least partially different between the intestine and the stomach.
Fig. 1 Anti-Xenopus Shh antiserum specifically recognizes Shh proteins.
The full-length Shh (Shh), its N-terminal fragment (N-Shh),
or C-terminal fragment (C-Shh) were made in the presence of [35S]
methionine (35S-Met) and were electrophoresed on SDS-protein
gels. The gels were either autoradiographed directly (A) or subjected
to Western blot analysis with the rabbit anti-Xenopus Shh
antiserum (B). Note that all of Shh, N-Shh, and C-Shh (asterisks)
were recognized by the antibody.
Fig. 5 AâD Primordia of the adult epithelium (AE) express Shh and actively proliferate in the intestine at early stage 61. (A, B) Adjacent sections stained with methyl green-pyronin Y (A) and immunostained with Shh antibody (B). A strong Shh immunoreac-tivity is localized in adult epithelial primordia but not in the larval epithelium (LE). (C, D) Adjacent sections immunostained with PCNA (C) and Shh (D) in the epithelium express Shh. Bars: 20 mm.antibodies. The actively proliferating cells
Fig. 8 Addition of N-Shh protein to the medium changes the proliferating
activity of intestinal tissues in vitro. Labeling indices of
proliferating cells in the epithelium (hatched bars) and the nonepithelial
tissues (filled bars) were measured after 5 days of treatment
with 0, 0.5, or 5.0 mg/ml N-Shh. Each value represents the mean Ï
SD of more than six explants. N-Shh significantly promotes cell
proliferation both in the epithelium and in nonepithelial tissues in
the absence of TH, but it does so only in the nonepithelial tissues
in its presence.
**P0.001 compared with control explants (0 mg/ml N-Shh)
*P 0.002 compared with control explants (0 mg/ml N-Shh)