Establishment Of Clones Of SM22α-EGFP Expressing Murine Embryonic Stem Cells And In Vitro Dynamic Tracing Of Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells Development

Abnormal growth and proliferation of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) is a key feature of vascular diseases such as atherosclerosis, restenosis, and hypertension. Differentiated VSMCs of mature animals express an unique repertoire of contractile proteins, ion channels, and signaling molecules that are necessary for their principle function of contraction. However, in response to various injurious stimuli, VSMCs can dedifferentiate, converting from a quiescent, contractile phenotype to a highly proliferative,synthetic phenotype.An understanding of the normal regulation of VSMCs development and differentiation will not only provide the foundation for elucidating how these processes may be disrupted in vascular disease but will also be critical to understanding congenital defects in vascular development and vascular development within solid tumors. However, currently only limited insight in the inductive clues that lead to specification and terminal differentiation of VSMCs is available, partly due to lack of a proper model of VSMCs development.Because VSMCs of early stages can not be obtained in vivo, embryonic stem cells (ESCs) provide a valuable in vitro model for the investigation of mechanisms in early VSMCs lineage commitment,...