{"doi":"10.1101/2022.07.12.499653","title":"Identification of a distinct ductal subpopulation with self-renewal and differentiation potential from the adult murine pancreas","abstract":"Abstract Pancreatic ducts function to deliver digestive enzymes into the intestines. Upon injury, ducts can become proliferative and contribute to tissue regeneration; however, the identity of the ductal cells that contribute to these processes is unknown. We combined fluorescence-activated cell sorting, a methylcellulose-containing 3-dimensional culture, droplet RNA-sequencing, and a clonal lineage tracing tool to identify and isolate a distinct subpopulation of pancreatic ductal cells that exhibit progenitor cell properties. These ductal cells are unique in that they form tightly-bound clusters (termed FSC mid-high ), with an average of 8 cells per cluster. FSC mid-high clusters comprise only about 0.1% of the total pancreas, are tri-potent for duct, acinar and endocrine lineages, and self-renew robustly in vitro . Transcriptomic analysis of FSC mid-high clusters reveals enrichment for genes involved in cell-cell interactions, organ development, and cancer pathways. FSC mid-high clusters express embryonic pancreatic progenitor markers Sox9, Pdx1, and Nkx6-1 at both transcription and protein levels. FSC mid-high clusters are resistant to enzymatic dissociation and survive severe in vivo acinar injury, which induces formation of ductal rosettes that become proliferative within 14 days. Thus, FSC mid-high clusters represent a small subset of ductal cells with progenitor cell properties. These rare progenitor-like duct cell clusters have implications in pancreas regeneration and tumor initiation/progression.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2022,"id":309821,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9492,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":946114,"name":"José Ortiz","orcid":"0000-0002-1688-4299","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":946113,"name":"Janine C. Quijano","orcid":"0000-0001-7755-3154","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1005017,"name":"Heather N. Zook","orcid":"0000-0002-5780-2042","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1005352,"name":"Jeanne M. LeBon","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":366655,"name":"Wendong Li","orcid":"0000-0001-8344-419X","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1005018,"name":"Kevin Jou","orcid":"0000-0002-9543-9686","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":684300,"name":"Walter Tsark","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":212094,"name":"Jeffrey R. Mann","orcid":null,"position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":617821,"name":"Mark T. Kozlowski","orcid":"0000-0003-4714-8697","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":756073,"name":"David A. Tirrell","orcid":"0000-0003-3175-4596","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":495098,"name":"Farzad Esni","orcid":"0000-0002-0342-6862","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":284836,"name":"Dannielle D. Engle","orcid":"0000-0003-1876-7675","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":283022,"name":"Arthur D. Riggs","orcid":"0000-0002-8184-5288","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":617823,"name":"Hsun Teresa Ku","orcid":"0000-0001-5662-9893","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":779606,"name":"Jacob R. Tremblay","orcid":"0000-0003-1818-7953","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":62,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:33:15.860993Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}