Background Congenital hypothyroidism (CH) due to thyroid dysgenesis is a frequent congenital endocrine disorder for which the molecular mechanisms remain unresolved in the majority of cases. This situation reflects, in part, our still limited knowledge about the mechanisms involved in the early steps of thyroid specification from the endoderm, in particular the extrinsic signaling cues that regulate foregut endoderm patterning. In this study, we used small molecules and genetic zebrafish models to characterize the role of various signaling pathways in thyroid specification.

Methods We treated zebrafish embryos during different developmental periods with small molecule compounds known to manipulate the activity of Wnt signaling pathway and observed effects in thyroid, endoderm and cardiovascular development using whole mount in situ hybridization and transgenic fluorescent reporter models. We used the antisens morpholino technique to create a zebrafish arcadiac model. For thyroid rescue experiments, BMP pathway induction in zebrafish embryos was obtained by manipulation of heat-shock inducible transgenic lines.

Results Combined analyses of thyroid and cardiovascular development revealed that overactivation of Wnt signaling during early development leads to impaired thyroid specification concurrent with severe defects in the cardiac specification. When using a model of morpholino-induced blockage of cardiomyocyte differentiation, a similar correlation was observed, suggesting that defective signaling between cardiac mesoderm and endodermal thyroid precursors contributes to thyroid specification impairment. Rescue experiments through transient overactivation of BMP signaling could partially restore thyroid specification in models with defective cardiac development.

Conclusion Collectively, our results indicate that BMP signaling is critically required for thyroid cell specification and identify cardiac mesoderm as a likely source of BMP signals. This article was deposited as a preprint in bioRxiv, p. 2019.12.19.880815, Dec. 2019.