A role for microRNAs in maintenance of mouse mammary epithelial progenitor cells

  1. Ingrid Ibarra1,2,
  2. Yaniv Erlich1,
  3. Senthil K. Muthuswamy1,
  4. Ravi Sachidanandam1, and
  5. Gregory J. Hannon1,3
  1. 1 Watson School of Biological Sciences, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, New York 11724, USA;
  2. 2 Program in Genetics, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York 11794, USA

Abstract

microRNA (miRNA) expression profiles are often characteristic of specific cell types. The mouse mammary epithelial cell line, Comma-Dβ, contains a population of self-renewing progenitor cells that can reconstitute the mammary gland. We purified this population and determined its miRNA signature. Several microRNAs, including miR-205 and miR-22, are highly expressed in mammary progenitor cells, while others, including let-7 and miR-93, are depleted. Let-7 sensors can be used to prospectively enrich self-renewing populations, and enforced let-7 expression induces loss of self-renewing cells from mixed cultures.

Keywords

Footnotes

  • 3 Corresponding author.

    3 E-MAIL hannon{at}cshl.edu; FAX (516) 367-8874.

  • Supplemental material is available at http://www.genesdev.org.

  • Article is online at http://www.genesdev.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gad.1616307

    • Received September 17, 2007.
    • Accepted October 30, 2007.
  • Freely available online through the Genes & Development Open Access option.

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