Bone Marrow Lacks a Transplantable Progenitor for Smooth Muscle Type -Actin Expressing Cells

¹ Immunology and Cancer Program, Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
² Medicine/Endocrinology, University of Oklahoma Health Science Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
³ National Eye Institute, NIH, Bethesda, Maryland

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: sanai-sato{at}ouhsc.edu.

	Abstract

While some studies have suggested that hematopoietic stem cells might give rise to other tissue types, others indicate that transdifferentiation would have to be an extremely rare event. We have now exploited smooth muscle type -actin (SMA) promoter driven GFP transgenic mice (SMA-GFP mice) for bone marrow transplantation to evaluate their potential to generate donor type tissues in irradiation chimeras. There was a highly restricted pattern of GFP expression in the transgenics, marking bone marrow stromal cells and mesangial cells in the kidney. However, these characteristics were not transferable to wild type animals given transgenic marrow cells even though hematopoietic cells were largely replaced. Our findings support earlier studies suggesting that the bone marrow microenvironment is difficult to transplant and indicate that hematopoietic stem cells are unlikely to give rise to SMA expressing progeny.

Key Words. Hematopoietic stem cells, stromal cells, transdifferentiation, smooth muscle -actin, transgenic GFP-mouse

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