E11.5 Mouse Endodermal Organ Gene Expression

To study gene expression during endodermal organogenesis, we sought to identify genes expressed in restricted domains during organogenesis. For gene expression analysis, six morphologically distinct endodermal domains were dissected at E11.5: the esophageal region; the lung and distal tracheal region; the stomach region; the hepatic region; the dorsal and ventral pancreatic region; and the intestinal region. Through flow cytometric separation using EpCAM expression to distinguish endoderm from surrounding mesenchyme, pure populations of endoderm progenitors from the esophageal, lung, stomach, pancreatic, and intestinal regions were isolated. Expression of Liv2 was used to isolate a pure population of hepatic endoderm progenitors. Keywords: cell type comparison Three biological replicates each containing dissected organ domains from 10-12 pooled embryos flow cytometrically sorted to isolate endoderm were amplified using Ambion Illumina TotalPrep RNA Amplification kit and arrayed on Illumina MouseRef8 v2 chips