Neural tube-associated boundary caps are a major source of mural cells in the skin
- Ecole normale supérieure, CNRS, Inserm, Université PSL, France
- Mondor Institute of Biomedical Research, France
- Institut Gustave Roussy, France
- Institut du Cerveau et de la Moelle Epinière, France
- University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, United States
- Karolinska Institute, Sweden
- Collège de France, France
Abstract
In addition to their roles in protecting nerves and increasing conduction velocity, peripheral glia plays key functions in blood vessel development by secreting molecules governing arteries alignment and maturation with nerves. Here we show in mice that a specific, nerve-attached cell population, derived from boundary caps (BCs), constitutes a major source of mural cells for the developing skin vasculature. Using Cre-based reporter cell tracing and single-cell transcriptomics, we show that BC derivatives migrate into the skin along the nerves, detach from them and differentiate into pericytes and vascular smooth muscle cells. Genetic ablation of this population affects the organization of the skin vascular network. Our results reveal the heterogeneity and extended potential of the BC population in mice, which gives rise to mural cells, in addition to previously described neurons, Schwann cells and melanocytes. Finally, our results suggest that mural specification of BC derivatives takes place before their migration along nerves to the mouse skin.
Data availability
Single-cell RNA-seq data have been deposited in the ArrayExpress database at EMBL-EBI (www.ebi.ac.uk/arrayexpress) under accession number E-MTAB-8972.
Article and author information
Author details
Gaspard Gerschenfeld
Funding
Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-10-LABX-54 MEMOLIFE)
- Patrick Charnay
Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-11-IDEX-0001-02 PSL* Research University)
- Patrick Charnay
Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale
- Patrick Charnay
- Piotr Topilko
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
- Patrick Charnay
- Piotr Topilko
Institut National Du Cancer
- Patrick Charnay
- Piotr Topilko
Ministère de l'Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche Scientifique
- Patrick Charnay
- Piotr Topilko
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Marianne E Bronner, California Institute of Technology, United States
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All animal manipulations were performed according to French and European Union regulations. According to these regulations, no ethics committee approval was required for this study which only used mouse embryos and newborns.
Version history
- Received: April 14, 2021
- Accepted: December 12, 2023
- Accepted Manuscript published: December 14, 2023 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: January 12, 2024 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2023, Gerschenfeld 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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Neural tube-associated boundary caps are a major source of mural cells in the skin
eLife 12:e69413.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.69413
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