Explant Culture for Studying Lung Development

Lung development is a complex process that requires the input of various signaling pathways to coordinate the specification and differentiation of multiple cell types. Ex vivo culture of the lung is a highly useful technique that represents an attractive model for investigating various processes critical to lung development, function, and disease pathology. Ex vivo cultured lungs remain comparable to the in vivo lung both in structure and function, which makes them more suitable than cell cultures for physiological studies. Lung explant cultures offer several significant advantages for studying morphogenic events that guide lung development, including budding, branching, and fusion. Additionally, these cultures preserve the native physiological interactions between cells in the developing lung, enabling investigations into the direct and indirect signalling taking place between tissues and cells throughout the developmental process. Studying the temporal and spatial control of gene expression by transcriptional factors using different reporters to understand their regulatory function at different moments of development is another valuable advantage of lung explant culture.