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"There is a lot of interest in generating motor neurons to study basic developmental processes as well as human diseases like ALS and spinal muscular atrophy," said Shaun Mahony, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State and one of the lead authors of the paper. "By detailing the mechanisms underlying the direct programing of motor neurons from stem cells, our study not only informs the study of motor neuron development and its associated diseases, but also informs our understanding of the direct programming process and may help with the development of techniques to generate other cell types." The direct programming technique could eventually be used to regenerate missing or damaged cells by converting other cell types into the missing one. The research findings, which appear online in the journal Cell Stem Cell on December 8, 2016, show the challenges facing current cell-replacement technology, but they also outline a potential pa...

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are stem cells that reside in bone marrow and are responsible for maintaining the continuous production of blood throughout life. HSCs have been used clinically for decades to treat various blood-borne illnesses ranging from leukemia to severe combined immunodeficiency syndrome. However, a major barrier to treatment is the limited availability of stem cells. Clinicians and researchers have worked to expand stem cell numbers, but have been largely unsuccessful at facilitating reproduction of these cells. This research provides clues as to why these efforts have not succeeded -- because these cells count and retain a memory of their divisions, which control their potential for further reproduction. According to the researchers, the study found that slow cycling cells contained all of the long-term HSC activity among the aging cells in the bone marrow. The data collected further shows that age-related changes to the HSCs, including HSC expansion, are d...

Induced pluripotent stem cells produced for the examine and seen beneath a microscope. Credit score: Scripps Translational Science Institute As it's in a lot of life, the growing old course of is not type to an necessary kind of stem cell that has nice therapeutic promise. Researchers on the Scripps Translational Science Institute (STSI) and The Scripps Analysis Institute (TSRI) who regarded on the impact of growing old on induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) discovered that genetic mutations elevated with the age of the donor who offered the supply cells, in keeping with examine outcomes revealed by the journal  Nature Biotechnology . The findings reinforce the significance of screening iPSCs for doubtlessly dangerous DNA mutations earlier than utilizing them for therapeutic functions, mentioned lead investigators Ali Torkamani, Ph.D., director of genome informatics at STSI, and Kris...

The findings were published online in the  Journal of Clinical Investigation . "While we've known for some time which genes are implicated in Prader-Willi syndrome, it has not been clear how those mutations actually trigger the disease," said lead author Lisa C. Burnett, PhD, a post-doctoral research scientist in pediatrics at CUMC. "Now that we have found a key link between these mutations and the syndrome's major hormonal features, we can begin to search for new, more precisely targeted therapies." An estimated one in 15,000 people have Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS). The syndrome is caused by abnormalities in a small region of chromosome 15, which leads to dysfunction in the hypothalamus -- which contains cells that regulate hunger and satiety -- and other regions of the brain. A defining characteristic of PWS is insatiable hunger. People with PWS typically have extreme obesity, reduced growth hormone and insulin levels, excessive levels of ghrelin (a...

Glioblastoma is a very aggressive tumor form and affected patients only survive for, on average, approximately a year after diagnosis. Researchers believe that the difficulties in treating the disease is caused by cells in the tumors called glioma-initiating cells (GICs), a kind of stem cells that can start growing again, after treatment has been finished. The new results from Uppsala University show that a single tumor contained GICs in different states that are differently resistant to therapy. Cell states that were resistant to radiation were also resistant to drugs, and states that were resistant to one drugs tended to be resistant to most of the other tested drugs. "Another interesting result was that th e GICs did not fall into distinct response groups. Instead the difference in their response can best be described as a continuum of cells with different resistance levels. We also discovered a relationship between the resistance level and molecular characteristics of ...

CRI researchers performed three experiments to find the position of Osteolectin (1 and a couple of) and decide whether or not remedy with Osteolectin might reverse bone loss attributable to osteoporosis (three). Credit score: Picture courtesy of UT Southwestern Medical Middle A staff of scientists on the Youngsters's Medical Middle Analysis Institute a t UT Southwestern (CRI) found a brand new bone-forming progress issue, Osteolectin ( Clec11a ), which reverses osteoporosis in mice and has implications for regenerative medication. Though Osteolectin is understood to be made by sure bone marrow and bone cells, CRI researchers are the primary to indicate Osteolectin promotes the formation of latest bone from skeletal stem cells within the bone marrow. The research, revealed in  eLife ,  additionally discovered that deletion of Osteolectin in mice causes accelerated bone loss throughout...