| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立嘉義大學 === 生物農業科技學系碩士班 === 100 === The 19 secreted glycoproteins of Wingless (Wnt) family control a variety of developmental processes in animal, including cell fate specification, cell proliferation, cell polarity and migration, such as their functions in lung growth and branching. Murine lung development starts at embryonic 9.5 day to postnatal 28. Within this period, different Wnt gene signals appear at the different sites of the embryonic lung, suggesting their distinct roles in lung development. For instance, Wnt7b was found to be highly expressed in the entire lung epithelium of E12.5 embryo, and Wnt5a was showed low expression in the mesenchyme and epithelium and was highly expressed around the trachea and pharynx. Currently, Wnt4 was also found expressed in the lung, and mutation of Wnt4 was observed in patients of “SERKAL Syndrome” with lung dysgenesis. Furthermore, Wnt4 plays important roles in the branching of mammary gland and sex gland. Since those patterns are similar to the lung branching, I hypothesize that Wnt4 may play a role in lung branching as well. For verifying it, I currently study the detail expression of Wnt4 at the embryonic stages, and examine the influence of Wnt4 expression using murine lung organ culture in vitro. Our results showed that Wnt4 is highly expressed in the entire lung epithelium of 13.5 and 14.5 embryos, and overexpression of Wnt4 in the primordial lung leading to an increase of lung branching.
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