Acquisition of cellular properties during alveolar formation requires differential activity and distribution of mitochondria
- University of California, San Francisco, United States
- University of California at San Francisco, United States
Abstract
Alveolar formation requires coordinated movement and interaction between alveolar epithelial cells, mesenchymal myofibroblasts and endothelial cells/pericytes to produce secondary septa. These processes rely on the acquisition of distinct cellular properties to enable ligand secretion for cell-cell signaling and initiate morphogenesis through cellular contraction, cell migration and cell shape change. In this study, we showed that mitochondrial activity and distribution play a key role in bestowing cellular functions on both alveolar epithelial cells and mesenchymal myofibroblasts for generating secondary septa to form alveoli in mice. These results suggest that mitochondrial function is tightly regulated to empower cellular machineries in a spatially-specific manner. Indeed, such regulation via mitochondria is required for secretion of ligands, such as platelet-derived growth factor, from alveolar epithelial cells to influence myofibroblast proliferation and contraction/migration. Moreover, mitochondrial function enables myofibroblast contraction/migration during alveolar formation. Together, these findings yield novel mechanistic insights into how mitochondria regulate pivotal steps of alveologenesis. They highlight selective utilization of energy in cells and diverse energy demands in different cellular processes during development. Our work serves as a paradigm for studying how mitochondria control tissue patterning.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files. This study does not generate source data files that need to be deposited.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (R01 HL142876)
- Pao-Tien Chuang
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Melanie Königshoff, University of Pittsburgh, United States
Ethics
Animal experimentation: This study was performed in strict accordance with the recommendations in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the National Institutes of Health. All of the animals were handled according to approved institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) protocols of the University of California, San Francisco. The protocol was approved by the Committee on the Ethics of Animal Experiments of the University of of California, San Francisco (Approval Number: AN187712-01).
Version history
- Received: March 20, 2021
- Preprint posted: April 11, 2021 (view preprint)
- Accepted: April 5, 2022
- Accepted Manuscript published: April 6, 2022 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: June 9, 2022 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2022, Zhang 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.
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Acquisition of cellular properties during alveolar formation requires differential activity and distribution of mitochondria
eLife 11:e68598.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.68598
