Endocrine Abstracts

The pituitary derives from an invagination of the oral ectoderm, Rathke’s pouch, where pituitary progenitors are specified during early development. These progenitors are marked by expression of Sox2 and their entry into differentiation involves a switch from Sox2 to expression of other transcription factors implementing each of the lineage-specific differentiation programs. This switch is also accompanied by a switch in cell cycle control mechanisms that may be disrupted...

Tpit is a pituitary-specific transcription factor that is important for corticotroph terminal differentiation. In TPit null mice corticotroph cells do not differentiate and cells immunopositive for SF1, LH and FSH are observed in the intermediate lobe (Pulichino et al. 2003 Genes Dev). As the anterior lobe in TPit null mice showed a 50% decrease in cell number compared to wild-type (WT), and corticotrophs comprise only 5–7% of anterior lobe cells, we investigated c...