Fig. 7: Ductal-to-acinar transdifferentiation occurs after DT-induced acinar cell loss.

a Schematic diagram illustrating the experimental timeline for cell labeling with Tam, washout, injury by DT treatment and analysis. b Whole-mount bright-field and fluorescent images showing zsGreen and tdT expression in the pancreas from Tnni3-Dre;CK19-CreER;IR1;Cela1-DTR mice 3 weeks after DT treatment. c H&E staining on pancreatic sections from the indicated mice. d, e Immunostaining for tdT, zsGreen and Amylase (d), or CK19 (e) on pancreatic sections collected from the indicated mice. White arrows, zsGreen⁺ acinar cells. f Quantification of the percentage of acinar cells expressing zsGreen or tdT from the indicated mice. Data are means ± SEM; no DT group, n = 5; +DT recovery group, n = 5. g UMAP visualization of the zsGreen⁺ epithelial cell clusters. h UMAP plots showing expression of indicated genes. i UMAP embedding of RNA velocity of zsGreen⁺ pancreatic epithelial cells from Tnni3-Dre;CK19-CreER;IR1;Cela1-DTR mice after recovery. j Selected GO terms enriched in zsGreen⁺ immature acinar cells compared with zsGreen⁺ ductal cells. k Diagram illustrating that a subset of new acinar cells is derived from zsGreen⁺ ductal cells after DT-induced acinar cell loss. Scale bars, yellow, 1 mm; white and black,100 μm. Each image is representative of 5 individual samples.