Abstract
The nature of stem and progenitor cells in the mammary epithelium, and the relevance of cleared fat pad transplantation as a functional assay for them, has been thrown into doubt by recent lineage-tracking studies. Now two new studies based on tracking the progeny of Wnt-responsive cells are starting to help make sense of this fascinating problem.
Highlights
The mammary gland undergoes dramatic morphological changes during puberty, pregnancy and involution
Transplantation studies of tissue fragments into a cleared mammary fat pad pioneered by DeOme and colleagues showed reconstitution of the mammary gland [1], demonstrating the presence of mammary stem cells
Work on serial transplantation of small numbers of purified basal mammary epithelial cells showed that they could regenerate the entire mammary epithelial tree with high efficiency and, that a single basal cell could do so [2,3,4,5]. These studies suggested the presence of multipotent mammary stem cells, located in the basal compartment
Summary
The mammary gland undergoes dramatic morphological changes during puberty, pregnancy and involution. This model was recently challenged by Van Keymeulen and colleagues, who suggested that the basal and luminal lineages were uncoupled in the adult mammary epithelium and that each lineage contained a unipotent stem cell population [6]. The lineage contribution of stem/progenitor cells during pregnancy was unclear, as Van Keymeulen and colleagues were able to label very few luminal cells
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