Salivary glands are formed by branching morphogenesis with epithelial progenitors forming a network of ducts and acini (secretory cells). During this process, epithelial progenitors specialise into distal (tips of the gland) and proximal (the stalk region) identities that produce the acini and higher order ducts respectively. Little is known about the factors that regulate progenitor expansion and specialisation in the different parts of the gland. Here we show that Sox9 is involved in establishing the identity of the distal compartment before the initiation of branching morphogenesis. Sox9 is expressed throughout the gland at the initiation stage before becoming restricted to the distal epithelium from the bud stage and throughout branching morphogenesis. Deletion of Sox9 in the epithelium results in loss of the distal epithelial progenitors, a reduction in proliferation and a subsequent failure in branching. We demonstrate that Sox9 is positively regulated by mesenchymal Fgf10, a process that requires active Erk signalling. These results provide new insights into the factors required for the expansion of salivary gland epithelial progenitors, which can be useful for organ regeneration therapy.

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© 2017. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd
2017
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly attributed.

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