Linkage of the brain-skin-gut axis: islet cells originate from dopaminergic precursors.

A population of cells containing the enzymes tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) and dopa-decarboxylase (L-AADC) but not dopamine-B-hydroxylase (DBH) nor phenylethanolamine-N-methyltransferase (PNMT) can be detected with immunocytochemical techniques in the pancreas of mouse embryos at the 11th day of development (E 11). The presence of TH in embryonal pancreas is transient: TH is not observed after E 15. By use of a method for simultaneously detecting two antigens in the same section both TH and glucagon were visualized in the same cell on E 12. Double labelled cells comprised 10% of all stained cells. At E 14.5, some of the cells stained for TH also contained insulin. However, at the time somatostatin appeared no embryonal cells containing TH remained. We conclude that two cell types of the APUD series, i.e., the glucagon and insulin cells of pancreas, arise from transformation, in situ, of cells that transiently express a dopaminergic phenotype. These results suggest that peptide-containing cells in skin, brain and gut are linked by a common embryonic origin. They also raise the prospect that other peptidergic cells of the APUD series may have aminergic precursors.