Hot Topics in Science: Our Review of 2015 (4/5)
17th December 2015 - Last modified 28th November 2023
Hot Topic #4: Insights into Regenerative Medicine.
The area of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine captures the imagination, with its promise of delivering donor organs matching a patient’s genetic makeup and thereby completely avoiding the challenges of immune rejection. One important aspect of this is epigenetics – or genetic control outside of the sequence code. Providing insights within the context of organ development, researchers have recently managed to alter the growth of a flatworm’s head and brain structures, by modifying cell-to-cell communication via electrical synapses.1 Following these modifications, one species of flatworm formed a set of head and brain structures characteristic of another species – and this was all achieved without touching the genetic sequence. This work points to a novel pathway for complex control during development, and I think really underlines the key importance of epigenetics throughout many physiological processes.
References:
- 1 Emmons-Bell, M, et al. (2015). Gap Junctional Blockade Stochastically Induces Different Species-Specific Head Anatomies in Genetically Wild-Type Girardia Dorotocephala Flatworms. Int. J. Mol. Sci. DOI: 10.3390/ijms161126065.
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