The molecular basis of thyroid and lung development

内胚层是一个描述早期胚胎内层的术语。这一层将产生一个简单的管子 这将产生许多重要的器官，包括甲状腺、肺、胰腺、肝脏和胃。这些 器官沿着管子以精确的空间顺序从特定的点产生。甲状腺来自于 管和肺的前部来自更靠后的内胚层。在…的最早阶段 发展，这两个地区共享许多对其最终发展至关重要的基因，所以我们 希望发现这两个器官的不同之处。我们发现，添加维甲酸后，活性 维生素A的一种，导致甲状腺关闭几个重要的甲状腺基因，打开 正常情况下只在肺部表达。我们的目标是理解发育命运中的这种转变。我们还将 利用这一开关来寻找对甲状腺或肺的形成至关重要的新基因。一旦我们有了 获得了在一个或另一个器官中表达的基因，我们将操纵这些基因来检查它们的 对甲状腺和肺分化的影响。通过这样做，我们希望对分子有更好的了解 这些内胚层器官的正常发育所需的网络。

Endoderm is a term that describes the interior layer of an early embryo. This layer will generate a simple tube that will give rise to many important organs including the thyroid, lung, pancreas, liver, and stomach. These organs arise from specific points along the tube in a precise spatial order. The thyroid comes from the very front of the tube and the lung comes from endoderm located further back. At the earliest stages of development, these two regions share many genes that are essential for their eventual development and so we wish to discover what makes the two organs different. We have found that addition of retinoic acid, the active form of vitamin A, causes the thyroid to turn off several important thyroid genes and turn on genes that are normally only expressed in lung. Our goal is to understand this switch in developmental fate. We will also exploit this switch to search for new genes that important for making a thyroid or a lung. Once we have obtained genes that are expressed in one organ or the other, we will manipulate those genes to examine their effect on thyroid and lung differentiation. By doing so we hope to gain a better understanding of the molecular network needed for the normal development of these endodermal organs.