Soluble signals released by neighboring cells direct how the human kidney is built
A human kidney is built once, before birth, and the rules guiding its construction have been largely inferred from animal models. Researchers at Penn Medicine have now read those rules directly in human tissue. They found that developing cells are steered by soluble signals released by their neighbors—and identified insulin-like growth factor 2 (IGF2) as a key signal that sustains the kidney's…
A team of researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, working together with bioengineers from the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Institute for Regenerative Medicine, have discovered how the human kidney forms during development. The study, published in Nature Genetics, reveals that neighboring cells release soluble signals that guide the formation of the kidney.
These signals were identified through a combination of single-cell RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomics, which allowed the researchers to analyze the exact location and context of each cell during development. The key signal implicated in the study is insulin-like growth factor 2 (IGF2), which sustains the kidney's stem-like cells and is crucial for the proper formation of nephrons, the filtering units of the kidney.
The findings suggest that the kidney's development is not solely determined by the types of cells present, but also by the specific signals they release and receive from their neighbors. This discovery has implications for understanding kidney health and diseases, as well as for advancing organoid technology.
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