Maternal Organ Remodelling and Physiology during Reproduction: Role of the Mesentery

Objective

Reproduction involves significant resizing of many maternal organs, including the intestine. While previous studies indicate that maternal gut growth supports offspring viability, contributions of surrounding tissues remain largely unexplored. The mesentery–a continuous, fan-shaped peritoneal fold anchoring the intestine to the body cavity–is composed of two layers of mesothelial cells encasing a complex stroma. Although essential during intestinal development, the adult mesentery is largely regarded as a structural scaffold and is rarely considered in the context of whole-body physiology and homeostasis. Intriguingly, the mesentery exhibits plasticity in adults during injury and disease, suggesting that its developmental potential can be reactivated by specific signals. While characterising the reproductive remodelling of the intestine, the host lab has observed that the surrounding tissues – including the mesentery – also grow. Building on these observations, I will investigate how the adult mesentery actively remodels during pregnancy and lactation and identify molecular signals orchestrating this process. Using mice as a model, histological and transcriptomic analyses will be combined to characterize region-specific changes in mesentery during female reproduction. Subsequently, the role of candidate genes or hormones in regulating mesentery resizing will be interrogated using ex-vivo mesentery culture and in vivo tissue-specific conditional knockouts. By characterising and understanding the mechanistic basis of mesentery reproductive remodelling, this work will provide the first detailed description of the murine mesentery and offer new insights into the plasticity and physiological role of this largely understudied organ.