Use It and Never Loose It: Embryonic Enhancers Remain Available
/Cells recall the way they were
Jessica Lau, HSCRB Communications
When cells grow up, they remember their childhoods.
A new study has found that adult cells keep a record of which genes were activated during their early development. Even more surprisingly, the memory is retrievable: Under certain lab conditions, cells can play the story of their development in reverse, switching on genes that were active before. The study, by researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI), Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, was published in Molecular Cell.
“We discovered that adult cells maintain a catalog of all of the genes used early in development — a record when organs and tissues are formed within the embryo,” said senior author Ramesh Shivdasani, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and DFCI, and faculty member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.
“Beyond the sheer existence of this archive, we were surprised to find that it doesn’t remain permanently locked away but can be accessed by cells under certain conditions,” he said. “This discovery has potentially profound implications for how we think about cells’ capabilities, and for the future treatment of degenerative and other diseases.”
