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Stem Cells in Marine Organisms pp 187–213Cite as

Secondary Mesenchyme Cells as Potential Stem Cells of the Sea Urchin Embryo

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Abstract

In the last years, stem cells have been the subject of great interest. Although considerable progress has been made in this field, the signaling pathways and related molecules controlling stem cells behaviour still remain unclear. Among marine invertebrates, echinoderms have the attracting ability to regenerate parts of their bodies, involving stem cells recruitment, and thus providing themselves as excellent models for studies on stem cells in adult organisms. On the contrary, hardly any research focused on embryonic stem cells has been performed using echinoderm embryos, although they have been utilised extensively and with noteworthy results, for example, for studies on basic developmental biology. Indeed, the great amount of data accumulated over the years, the availability of new genomic and proteomic research tools, together with the advantage of experimental manipulation support the sea urchin embryo as a good candidate for detailed studies on embryonic stem cells. Here, we review fundamental findings concerning the two distinct populations of mesodermal cells in the sea urchin embryo, discussing the possibility to identify some of them as embryonic stem cells. In particular, secondary mesenchyme cells (SMCs) are a heterogeneous population of cells with several different fates and behaviours. Taken together, a number of evidence indicates that SMCs function as multipotent stem cells, thus sharing some features with vertebrate embryonic stem cells, including the neural crest cells. Our aim is to address new viewpoints for forthcoming studies on SMCs as well as to open new directions for research on fundamental mechanisms of stem cell biology exploiting the sea urchin embryo as a model system.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Maria Byrne and Hideki Katow for their critical reading of a draft of this manuscript. We warmly thank all the other members of the group for their help and support. F.Z. wishes to express her gratitude to a few colleagues of IBIM for their continuous encouragement, helpfulness and friendliness. Authors are grateful for the partial financial support of the Marine Genomics Europe Network of the Excellence and MoMe ASI project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto di Biomedicina e Immunologia Molecolare “Alberto Monroy”, Via Ugo La Malfa 153, 90146, Palermo, Italy

    Francesca Zito & Valeria Matranga

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  1. Francesca Zito
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  2. Valeria Matranga
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Correspondence to Francesca Zito .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Limnological Research, Israel Oceanographic & , Haifa, 31 080, Israel

    Baruch Rinkevich

  2. Istituto di Biomedicina e Immunologia, CNR Palermo, Via La Malfa 153, Palermo, 90146, Italy

    Valeria Matranga

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Zito, F., Matranga, V. (2009). Secondary Mesenchyme Cells as Potential Stem Cells of the Sea Urchin Embryo. In: Rinkevich, B., Matranga, V. (eds) Stem Cells in Marine Organisms. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2767-2_8

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