Dll1 marks early secretory progenitors in gut crypts that can revert to stem cells upon tissue damage

The introduction of GFP into the Dll1 locus has made it possible to isolate and study primary intestinal Dll1 positive cells, which constitute the secretory cell precursors of the intestine. Applying DNA array technology, we profiled the RNA changes of FACS-sorted Dll1_high/CD24_low, Dll1_high/CD24_medium and Dll1_high/CD24_high cells . We used cell fractions of intestines from Dll1-EGFP-ires-CreERT2 mice, expressing GFP under the control of the Dll1 promoter. RNA was isolated from three FACS sorted cell populations: all are expressing Dll1-GFP at high levels, but are expressing different levels of Cd24 (low, medium and high). For this set two biological replicates were generated. One additional fraction was isolated from Lgr5-EGFP-ires-CreERT2 mice, expressing GFP under the control of the Lgr5 promoter. This cell fraction contains intestinal stem cells. Differentially labelled cRNA from these cell fractions was hybridized against a reference (RNA isolated from whole intestine) on 4X44K Agilent Whole Mouse Genome dual colour Microarrays (G4122F).