The outer coverings of the skeleton,which is also known as the periosteum,are arranged in concentric layers and act as a reservoir for tissue-specific bone progenitors.The cellular heterogeneity within this tissue depot is being increasingly recognized.Here,inducible PDGFRαreporter animals were found to mark a population of cells within the periosteum that act as a stem cell reservoir for periosteal appositional bone formation and fracture repair.During these processes,PDGFRαreporter^(+)progenitors give rise to Nestin+periosteal cells before becoming osteoblasts and osteocytes.The diphtheria toxin-mediated ablation of PDGFRαreporter^(+)cells led to deficits in cortical bone formation during homeostasis and a diminutive hard callus during fracture repair.After ossicle transplantation,both mouse PDGFRαreporter^(+)periosteal cells and human Pdgfrα+periosteal progenitors expand,ossify,and recruit marrow to a greater extent than their counterpart periosteal cells,whereas PDGFRαreporter^(−)periosteal cells exhibit a predisposition to chondrogenesis in vitro.Total RNA sequencing identified enrichment of the secreted factors Fermt3 and Ptpn6 within PDGFRαreporter^(+)periosteal cells,which partly underlie the osteoblastogenic features of this cell population.
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