Plasticity in airway smooth muscle differentiation during mouse lung development.

Katharine Goodwin, Bezia Lemma, Pengfei Zhang, Adam Boukind, Celeste M Nelson

Developmental cell 2023 Mar 13

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It has been proposed that smooth muscle differentiation may physically sculpt airway epithelial branches in mammalian lungs. Serum response factor (SRF) acts with its co-factor myocardin to activate the expression of contractile smooth muscle markers. In the adult, however, smooth muscle exhibits a variety of phenotypes beyond contractile, and these are independent of SRF/myocardin-induced transcription. To determine whether a similar phenotypic plasticity is exhibited during development, we deleted Srf from the mouse embryonic pulmonary mesenchyme. Srf-mutant lungs branch normally, and the mesenchyme displays mechanical properties indistinguishable from controls. scRNA-seq identified an Srf-null smooth muscle cluster, wrapping the airways of mutant lungs, which lacks contractile smooth muscle markers but retains many features of control smooth muscle. Srf-null embryonic airway smooth muscle exhibits a synthetic phenotype, compared with the contractile phenotype of mature wild-type airway smooth muscle. Our findings identify plasticity in embryonic airway smooth muscle and demonstrate that a synthetic smooth muscle layer promotes airway branching morphogenesis. Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Citation

Katharine Goodwin, Bezia Lemma, Pengfei Zhang, Adam Boukind, Celeste M Nelson. Plasticity in airway smooth muscle differentiation during mouse lung development. Developmental cell. 2023 Mar 13;58(5):338-347.e4