Functional identification of bovine mammary epithelial stem/progenitor cells

摘要

The lactation curve in dairy cattle has a well known pattern: after parturition, milk production rapidly increases with a maximum peak approximately a month later, then it slowly and steadily decreases. It has previously been shown that the initial increase in milk production is due to the growing secretory activity of alveolar epithelial cells. After the peak of lactation, there is no further change in the secretory activity and the following decline in milk production depends on a slow and continuous decrease in the number of secreting cells (Capuco et al. 2001). Strategies aimed at achieving higher milk production, like the administration of somatotropin, have been shown to be effective through their proliferative effect on epithelial cells in mid-late lactation (Capuco et al. 2003.).