The endothelial-cell-derived secreted factor Egfl7 regulates vascular tube formation

Leon H. Parker, Maike Schmidt, Suk-Won Jin, Alane M. Gray, Dimitris Beis, Thinh Pham, Gretchen Frantz, Susan Palmieri, Kenneth Hillan, Didier Y. R. Stainier, Frederic J. de Sauvage and Weilan Ye ()
Additional contact information
Leon H. Parker: Genentech Inc.
Maike Schmidt: Genentech Inc.
Suk-Won Jin: University of California San Francisco
Alane M. Gray: Genentech Inc.
Dimitris Beis: University of California San Francisco
Thinh Pham: Genentech Inc.
Gretchen Frantz: Genentech Inc.
Susan Palmieri: Genentech Inc.
Kenneth Hillan: Genentech Inc.
Didier Y. R. Stainier: University of California San Francisco
Frederic J. de Sauvage: Genentech Inc.
Weilan Ye: Genentech Inc.

Nature, 2004, vol. 428, issue 6984, 754-758

Abstract: Abstract Vascular development is a complex but orderly process that is tightly regulated. A number of secreted factors produced by surrounding cells regulate endothelial cell (EC) differentiation, proliferation, migration and coalescence into cord-like structures1,2. Vascular cords then undergo tubulogenesis to form vessels with a central lumen3,4. But little is known about how tubulogenesis is regulated in vivo. Here we report the identification and characterization of a new EC-derived secreted factor, EGF-like domain 7 (Egfl7). Egfl7 is expressed at high levels in the vasculature associated with tissue proliferation, and is downregulated in most of the mature vessels in normal adult tissues. Loss of Egfl7 function in zebrafish embryos specifically blocks vascular tubulogenesis. We uncover a dynamic process during which gradual separation and proper spatial arrangement of the angioblasts allow subsequent assembly of vascular tubes. This process fails to take place in Egfl7 knockdown embryos, leading to the failure of vascular tube formation. Our study defines a regulator that controls a specific and important step in vasculogenesis.

Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02416 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:428:y:2004:i:6984:d:10.1038_nature02416

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature02416

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().