Detection of podocyte proliferation in rat nephropathy models by retrovirus-EGFP tracing technology

作者:Hu, Ruimin; Mao, Xing; Cai, Xiaofan; Xing, Guolan; Fu, Xiaodan; Xie, Bingying; Sun, Yu; Fu, Chensheng; Zhao, Zhonghua; Wu, Huijuan*; Zhang, Zhigang*
来源:International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Pathology, 2016, 9(3): 3340-3348.

摘要

Podocyte depletion is a pivotal pathogenesis for many types of glomerulonephritis. There is expanding literatures suggests that the podocyte injury and loss may be replenished by podocyte regeneration or by transferring from the parietal progenitor cell proliferation. But the mechanism underlying podocyte responding to injury and repair in diverse glomerulonephritis is still not fully understood. The lack of an effective method to find direct evidence of podocyte division in vivo is a limitation for the research. In this study, we used retrovirus-enhanced green fluorescent protein tracing technology to capture the proliferated podocytes immediately after mitosis in rat adriamycin nephropathy and passive Heymann nephritis models. The proliferated podocytes in glomeruli were captured by detecting GFP as well as BrdU via immunohistochemical staining. GFP and BrdU positive cells were detected by immunohistochemical staining, which overlaps the WT1 positive, in glomeruli of rat adriamycin nephropathy and passive Heymann nephritis models. These results indicate damaged podocyte is able to proliferate in rat glomerulonephritis models, and pMSCV-EGFP tracing technology is a significant method for further studying of podocytes injury and repair in glomerulonephritis.