Tissue resident macrophages promote extracellular matrix homeostasis in the mammary gland stroma of nulliparous mice
Abstract
Tissue resident macrophages in the mammary gland are found in close association with epithelial structures and within the adipose stroma, and are important for mammary gland development and tissue homeostasis. While macrophages have been linked to ductal development in the virgin mammary gland, less is known regarding the effects of macrophages on the adipose stroma. Using transcriptional profiling and single cell RNA sequencing approaches, we identify a distinct resident stromal macrophage subpopulation within the mouse nulliparous mammary gland characterized by expression of Lyve-1, a receptor for the extracellular matrix (ECM) component hyaluronan. This subpopulation is enriched in genes associated with ECM remodeling and is specifically associated with hyaluronan-rich regions within the adipose stroma and fibrous capsule of the virgin mammary gland. Furthermore, macrophage depletion leads to enhanced accumulation of hyaluronan-associated ECM in the adipose-associated stroma, indicating that resident macrophages are important for maintaining homeostasis within the nulliparous mammary gland stroma.
Data availability
Sequencing data have been deposited in GEO under accession codes GSE148207 and GSE148209.
-
Single cell analysis of immune cell populations in mammary glands from 10-week-old miceNCBI Gene Expression Omnibus, GSE148209.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Institutes of Health (T 32 fellowship,OD010993)
- Patrice M Witschen
American Cancer Society (Post-doctoral fellowship,132570-PF-18-140-01-CSM)
- Danielle N Huggins
American Cancer Society (Clinical Scholar Development Grant,132574-CSDG-18-139-01-CSM)
- Andrew C Nelson
National Institutes of Health (R01CA212518)
- Heather L Machado
National Institutes of Health (R01HD095858)
- Kathryn L Schwertfeger
National Institutes of Health (R01CA235385)
- Kathryn L Schwertfeger
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All animal care and procedures were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees of the University of Minnesota (protocol #1909-37381A) and Tulane University (protocol #710) and were in accordance with the procedures detailed in the Guide for Care and Use of Laboratory Animals.
Human subjects: The study was approved for exemption (#00008356) by the Institutional Review Board at the University of Minnesota and all patients had accepted the institutional standard consent for research utilization of clinical data and samples. All patient materials were de-identified following standard protocols.
Copyright
© 2020, Wang et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 7,522
- views
-
- 681
- downloads
-
- 64
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Further reading
-
- Developmental Biology
Wnt signaling plays crucial roles in embryonic patterning including the regulation of convergent extension (CE) during gastrulation, the establishment of the dorsal axis, and later, craniofacial morphogenesis. Further, Wnt signaling is a crucial regulator of craniofacial morphogenesis. The adapter proteins Dact1 and Dact2 modulate the Wnt signaling pathway through binding to Disheveled. However, the distinct relative functions of Dact1 and Dact2 during embryogenesis remain unclear. We found that dact1 and dact2 genes have dynamic spatiotemporal expression domains that are reciprocal to one another suggesting distinct functions during zebrafish embryogenesis. Both dact1 and dact2 contribute to axis extension, with compound mutants exhibiting a similar CE defect and craniofacial phenotype to the wnt11f2 mutant. Utilizing single-cell RNAseq and an established noncanonical Wnt pathway mutant with a shortened axis (gpc4), we identified dact1/2-specific roles during early development. Comparative whole transcriptome analysis between wildtype and gpc4 and wildtype and dact1/2 compound mutants revealed a novel role for dact1/2 in regulating the mRNA expression of the classical calpain capn8. Overexpression of capn8 phenocopies dact1/2 craniofacial dysmorphology. These results identify a previously unappreciated role of capn8 and calcium-dependent proteolysis during embryogenesis. Taken together, our findings highlight the distinct and overlapping roles of dact1 and dact2 in embryonic craniofacial development, providing new insights into the multifaceted regulation of Wnt signaling.
-
- Developmental Biology
Sensorimotor reflex circuits engage distinct neuronal subtypes, defined by precise connectivity, to transform sensation into compensatory behavior. Whether and how motor neuron populations specify the subtype fate and/or sensory connectivity of their pre-motor partners remains controversial. Here, we discovered that motor neurons are dispensable for proper connectivity in the vestibular reflex circuit that stabilizes gaze. We first measured activity following vestibular sensation in pre-motor projection neurons after constitutive loss of their extraocular motor neuron partners. We observed normal responses and topography indicative of unchanged functional connectivity between sensory neurons and projection neurons. Next, we show that projection neurons remain anatomically and molecularly poised to connect appropriately with their downstream partners. Lastly, we show that the transcriptional signatures that typify projection neurons develop independently of motor partners. Our findings comprehensively overturn a long-standing model: that connectivity in the circuit for gaze stabilization is retrogradely determined by motor partner-derived signals. By defining the contribution of motor neurons to specification of an archetypal sensorimotor circuit, our work speaks to comparable processes in the spinal cord and advances our understanding of principles of neural development.