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Fig. 4. Role of mesenchyme in the induction of uterine epithelial phenotype. ECM, extracellular matrix. Expression of PR (left column) and ER{alpha} (right column) in UtE was examined in vivo (A-D, I-L) and in vitro (E-H). In the E18 uterine anlage, both PR (A) and ER{alpha} (B) were undetectable in the epithelium. By P5, UtE in situ became strongly positive for PR (C) but was negative for ER{alpha} (D). By contrast, when isolated E18-UtE was cultured in vitro for 7 days, PR was detected in only a subset (<20%) of epithelial cells (E), while ER{alpha} was detected in more than a half of epithelial cells. By contrast, adult-UtE maintained a high level of PR (G) and ER{alpha} (H) under the same culture conditions. When E18-UtE was recombined with UtM, the epithelium expressed PR (I) and ER{alpha} (J) after 1 month of in vivo growth. In the same host, E18-UtE recombined with BLM did not express PR (K), while ER{alpha} (L) was strongly expressed.