There is a significant body of experimental evidence that a rise in intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) contributes to senescence. Here we review experiments where entry into senescence has been evaluated in cells whose intracellular ROS levels have been modulated by growth in either high or low ambient oxygen concentrations, or where the cellular antioxidant status has been perturbed. In addition, we discuss the observations that senescence triggered by oncogene expression also appears to be in part mediated by a rise in ROS levels. Finally, we discuss the emerging evidence that in vivo senescence might also be triggered by a rise in cellular oxidant levels. Although these data tend to support a role for ROS in mediating senescence, significant questions remain as to whether ROS act in a random or specific fashion and what precise oxidant species acts as the potential senescence trigger.

Understanding the molecular mechanisms of stem cell maintenance is crucial for the ultimate goal of manipulating stem cells for the treatment of disease. Foxd3 is required early in mouse embryogenesis; Foxd3 -/-embryos fail around the time of implantation, cells of the inner cell mass cannot be maintained in vitro, and blastocyst-derived stem cell lines cannot be established. Here, we report that Foxd3 is required for maintenance of the multipotent mammalian neural crest. Using tissue-specific deletion of Foxd3 in the neural crest, we show that Foxd3 flox/-; Wnt1-Cre mice die perinatally with a catastrophic loss of neural crest-derived structures. Cranial neural crest tissues are either missing or severely reduced in size, the peripheral nervous system consists of reduced dorsal root ganglia and cranial nerves, and the entire gastrointestinal tract is devoid of neural crest derivatives. These results demonstrate a global role for this transcriptional repressor in all aspects of neural crest maintenance along the anterior-posterior axis, and establish an unprecedented molecular link between multiple divergent progenitor lineages of the mammalian embryo.

The contribution of the Wnt pathway has been extensively characterized in embryogenesis, differentiation, and stem cell biology but not in mammalian metabolism. Here, using in vivo gain- and loss-of-function models, we demonstrate an important role for Wnt signaling in hepatic metabolism. In particular, β-Catenin, the downstream mediator of canonical Wnt signaling, altered serum glucose concentrations and regulated hepatic glucose production. β-catenin also modulated hepatic insulin signaling. Furthermore, β-catenin interacted with the transcription factor FoxO1 in livers from mice under starved conditions. The interaction of FoxO1 with β-catenin regulated the transcriptional activation of the genes encoding glucose-6-phosphatase (G6Pase) and phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase (PEPCK), the two rate-limiting enzymes in hepatic gluconeogenesis. Moreover, starvation induced the hepatic expression of mRNAs encoding different Wnt isoforms. In addition, nutrient deprivation appeared to favor the association of β-catenin with FoxO family members, rather than with members of the T cell factor of transcriptional activators. Notably, in a model of diet-induced obesity, hepatic deletion of β-catenin improved overall metabolic homeostasis. These observations implicate Wnt signaling in the modulation of hepatic metabolism and raise the possibility that Wnt signaling may play a similar role in the metabolic regulation of other tissues.