Bcl-2 Expression in Korean Fetal Lungs

Yoo, Young Bok

Abstract

Apoptosis plays an important role in the morphogenesis and the function establishment of organs during embryonic development. Many reports have suggested apoptosis-related genes were ongenes, tumor suppressor genes, growthregulating factors. Although expression of apoptosis-related genes been mostly studied in the development of the nervous system and the limb formation and the immunological organs, the information of regulating mechanism is not comprehensive. Although apoptosis is important in the development, there was few report about apoptosis-related genes including bcl-2 in the human development. We intended to obtain the basic data in order to understand the role of the apoptosis-suppressing gene, bcl-2, in the apoptosis in the lung development. Immunohistochemistry for bcl-2 was performed using a tissue-array technique, on Korean fetal lung tissues in the 14~40 weeks of the human development. Our results showed that the most of mesenchymal cells surrounding the epithelium of the developing bronchi were stained. Bcl-2 expression was high in early stages of human development in the lung. As differentiation grew, the mesenchymal cells expressing bcl-2 decreased and expression of bcl-2 had the tendency of localizing in a few interstitial mesenchymal cells. We suggested that in the early stage when differentiation didn't occur cell death was suppressed, in the late stage when differentiation was achieving cell death increased to remove the innecessary portions of the organs to protect the specific cells of the organs having functions. For the efficiency of the experiment, a high-throughput technique, a tissue-array method was applied which contributed to save time, money and labor without performance errors. Tissue-array technique will be useful to fasten the developmental studies.