{"doi":"10.3390/biom11121829","title":"Morphometric Analysis of Rat Prostate Development: Roles of MEK/ERK and Rho Signaling Pathways in Prostatic Morphogenesis","abstract":"The molecular mechanisms underlying prostate development can provide clues for prostate cancer research. It has been demonstrated that MEK/ERK signaling downstream of androgen-targeted FGF10 signaling directly induces prostatic branching during development, while Rho/Rho-kinase can regulate prostate cell proliferation. MEK/ERK and Rho/Rho kinase regulate myosin light chain kinase (MLCK), and MLCK regulates myosin light chain phosphorylation (MLC-P), which is critical for cell fate, including cell proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis. However, the roles and crosstalk of the MEK/ERK and Rho/Rho kinase signaling pathways in prostatic morphogenesis have not been examined. In the present study, we used numerical and image analysis to characterize lobe-specific rat prostatic branching during postnatal organ culture and investigated the roles of FGF10-MEK/ERK and Rho/Rho kinase signaling pathways in prostatic morphogenesis. Prostates exhibited distinctive lobe-specific growth and branching patterns in the ventral (VP) and lateral (LP) lobes, while exogenous FGF10 treatment shifted LP branching towards a VP branching pattern. Treatment with inhibitors of MEK1/2, Rho, Rho kinase, or MLCK significantly inhibited VP growth and blocked branching morphogenesis, further supporting critical roles for MEK/ERK and Rho/Rho kinase signaling pathways in prostatic growth and branching during development. We propose that MLCK-regulated MLC-P may be a central downstream target of both signaling pathways in regulating prostate morphogenesis.","journal":"Biomolecules","year":2021,"id":206375,"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":6,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9551,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":673703,"name":"Parivash Afradiasbagharani","orcid":"0000-0003-3212-3155","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":674555,"name":"Ranli Lu","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":791362,"name":"Li-feng Liu","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":673706,"name":"Lynn Birch","orcid":"0000-0003-1153-625X","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":673707,"name":"Gail S. Prins","orcid":"0000-0002-9044-4734","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":735376,"name":"Wen‐Yang Hu","orcid":"0000-0001-7811-2078","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":54,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:51:41.571653Z","pmid":"34944473","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":[]}