日本东京理科大学研究人员日前发现，胚胎发育初期，细胞间质分泌的一种蛋白质能促进胚胎分化出组织和器官。这项研究成果已刊登在新一期美国《国家科学院学报》（PNAS）网络版上。

一般来说，由受精卵发育成的初期胚胎，是由上皮组织和结缔组织组成的。上皮细胞与结缔组织中的间质一方面会相互作用，一方面会分化成心脏和肾脏等器官。不过，两者间相互作用的具体机制一直不清楚。

日本研究人员通过实验鼠研究发现，在上述过程中，细胞间质分泌的“卵泡抑素样因子1”发挥着关键作用。

在胚胎发育初期，如果出现异常，就会导致胎儿畸形或出现癌变。上述研究发现了胚胎发育中胚胎内部相互作用的部分机制，将有助于进一步了解胎儿发育异常等病因。

原文出处：

PNAS doi: 10.1073/pnas.0909501107

Follistatin-like-1, a diffusible mesenchymal factor determines the fate of epithelium
Tomohiro Umezu, Hiromi Yamanouchi, Yusuke Iida, Masataka Miura, and Yasuhiro Tomooka1

Mesenchyme is generally believed to play critical roles in “secondary induction” during organogenesis. Because of the complexity of tissue interactions in secondary inductions, however, little is known about the precise mechanisms at the cellular and molecular levels. We have demonstrated that, in mouse oviductal development, the mesenchyme determines the fate of undetermined epithelial cells to become secretory or cilial cells. We have established a model for studying secondary induction by establishing clonal epithelial and mesenchymal cell lines from perinatal p53?/? mouse oviducts. The signal sequence trap method collected candidate molecules secreted from mesenchymal cell lines. Naive epithelial cells exposed to Follistatin-like-1 (Fstl1), one of the candidates, became irreversibly committed to expressing a cilial epithelial marker and differentiated into ciliated cells. We concluded that Fstl1 is one of the mesenchymal factors determining oviductal epithelial cell fate. This is a unique demonstration that the determination of epithelial cell fate is induced by a single diffusible factor.