The biomechanical properties of an epithelial tissue determine the location of its vasculature.
(2016) Nature Communications — Vol. 7, n° 7, p. 13560 (2016)
Files
ncomms13560-2.pdf
Open Access - Adobe PDF
- 3.23 MB
Details
- Authors
- Abstract
- An important question is how growing tissues establish a blood vessel network. Here we study vascular network formation in pancreatic islets, endocrine tissues derived from pancreatic epithelium. We find that depletion of integrin-linked kinase (ILK) in the pancreatic epithelial cells of mice results in glucose intolerance due to a loss of the intra-islet vasculature. In turn, blood vessels accumulate at the islet periphery. Neither alterations in endothelial cell proliferation, apoptosis, morphology, Vegfa expression and VEGF-A secretion nor 'empty sleeves' of vascular basement membrane are found. Instead, biophysical experiments reveal that the biomechanical properties of pancreatic islet cells, such as their actomyosin-mediated cortex tension and adhesive forces to endothelial cells, are significantly changed. These results suggest that a sorting event is driving the segregation of endothelial and epithelial cells and indicate that the epithelial biomechanical properties determine whether the blood vasculature invades or envelops a growing epithelial tissue.
- Affiliations
Citations
Kragel, M., Schubert, R., Karsjens, H., Otter, S., Bartosinska, B., Jeruschke, K., Weiss, J., Chen, C., Alsteens, D., Kuss, O., Speier, S., Eberhard, D., Müller, D., & Lammert, E. (2016). The biomechanical properties of an epithelial tissue determine the location of its vasculature. Nature Communications, 7(7), 13560. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms13560 (Original work published 2016)