Endocrine Abstracts

The differences between the adrenocortical zones have attracted much attention.There is considerable species variation, but the prevailing view is that each zone has steroidogenic activities, with varying specificity.Thus, the zona reticularis in the adult adrenal is thought to produce rather more C19 steroids than the fasciculata, though this difference is not absolute. In most species, the greatest differences between the steroidogenic funct...

Wnt proteins are morphogens that are involved in morphogenesis, differentiation and stem cell biology in a variety of tissues. In the adrenal cortex, WNT4 is expressed at a higher level in the zona glomerulosa (ZG) and mice deficient in WNT4 have a defect in this zone. In this laboratory we confirmed that WNT4 is expressed at a higher level in the human ZG and showed that this is accompanied by higher expression of a potential antagonist, dickkopf-3 (DKK3). To investigate the ...

Adrenomedullin is a vasoactive peptide which is classically produced by vascular endothelial cells. It has been identified in the rat adrenal gland where it has a zone-specific distribution, being produced by the zona glomerulosa and medulla, but not the inner zones (zona fasciculata and reticularis). There is also an extensive peptidergic innervation to the zona glomerulosa, but not to the other cortical zones.There are several possible reasons for this...

There is now clear evidence that diverse corticotropic factors released by chromaffin cells, by nerve fibers innervating the adrenal cortex, by cells of the immune system and/or by the endothelium are involved in the local control of adrenocortical cell activity. The adrenal gland of lower vertebrates, notably amphibians, in which cortical and chromaffin cells are closely entangled, is a very suitable model to investigate the paracrine regulation of adrenocortical cells. The e...