Estrogen receptor-α regulates pulmonary alveolar loss and regeneration in female mice: morphometric and gene expression studies

Abstract

Pulmonary alveoli, especially in females, are estrogen-responsive structures: ovariectomy in wild-type (WT) adult mice results in alveolar loss, and estradiol replacement induces alveolar regeneration. Furthermore, estrogen receptor (ER)-α and ER-β are required for the developmental formation of a full complement of alveoli in female mice. We now show ovariectomy resulted in alveolar loss in adult ER-β−/− mice but not in adult ER-α−/− mice. Estradiol treatment of ovariectomized ER-β−/− mice induced alveolar regeneration. In ovariectomized WT mice, estradiol treatment resulted, within 1 h, in RNA-level gene expression supportive of processes needed to form an alveolar septum, e.g., cell replication, angiogenesis, extracellular matrix remodeling, and guided cell motion. Among these processes, protein expression supporting angiogenesis and cell replication was elevated 1 and 3 h, respectively, after estradiol treatment; similar findings were not present in either mutant. We conclude: 1) loss of signaling via ER-β is not required for postovariectomy-induced alveolar loss or estradiol-induced regeneration; this indicates ER-α is key for estrogen-related alveolar loss and regeneration in adult female mice; 2) taken together with prior work showing that developmental formation of a full complement of alveoli requires ER-α and ER-β, the present findings indicate the developmental and regenerative formation of alveoli are regulated differently, i.e., signaling for alveolar regeneration is not merely a recapitulation of signaling for developmental alveologenesis; and 3) the timing of estradiol-induced gene expression in lung supportive of processes required to form a septum differs between ovariectomized WT and ER-β−/− mice.