近距离观察治疗
Assistant 教授essor of Biology Vicki Losick admits she harbors a desire to change the world a little bit.
“我想让‘多倍体’成为一个家喻户晓的词,洛西克在她位于希金斯厅的办公室里说, 就在她实验室的隔壁, where she and her team are among the leading researchers investigating the curative aspects of a cellular phenomenon she says should be as familiar as the stem cell.
开始, polyploidy is a condition in which the cells of an organism have more than one pair of chromosomes. 人类, 大多数物种, are diploid: They have two complete sets of chromosomes, 父母各一份. Most plants are polyploid, with cells replicating again and again. Polyploidy is what fattens strawberries, for instance. Same with blueberries and bananas and most other fruits.
在人类, polyploidy’s uncontrolled cellular replication was at first viewed as a dangerous contributor to the growth of cancers. But Losick and others have found that the human body contains more polyploid cells than first understood. For instance, polyploid cells may make up as much as 80 percent of the adult human heart.
薇姬·洛西克(李·佩莱格里尼饰)
Losick’s research has discovered that polyploid cells play a crucial role in wound healing, a role she thinks places polyploidy on the same level as stem cells, which have revolutionized the life sciences and many aspects of health care.
Losick would like to hear the word—a German derivation of the Greek words for “many” and “folds”—uttered by the president of the United States and spoken by evening news anchors.
“Everyone should know what a polyploidy is,” she said. “As a researcher, one of my goals is to educate the public. I think everyone should know the word and the role polyploidy plays in their lives.”
Among the scientists at the forefront of this relatively emergent field, Losick在期刊上发表了她的电子游戏正规平台结果 发展, 遗传学趋势, 伤口护理进展， her lab’s findings helping to reveal mechanisms of “wound-induced polyploidization,” or WIP. Last May, she helped to organize the scientific conference “Polyploidy Across the Tree of Life.”
正如去年杂志上的一篇报道 科学 noted, Losick and her peers have upended the previously held assumptions about polyploidy. “可以肯定的是多倍体细胞, 一点也不反常, are one of life’s major mechanisms for coping with the stresses of injury, 疾病, 一个充满敌意的环境,这篇文章指出.
“As a researcher, one of my goals is to educate the public. I think everyone should know the word and the role polyploidy plays in their lives.”
Losick’s research has identified a protein that aids in the control of polyploidy in fruit flies. 在哺乳动物中, 它的等效分子是YAP1, shorthand for “yes1 associated transcription regulator,文章解释道。. Scientists know that YAP1 plays a role in helping to regulate genes that control the size of human organs. In insects, YAP1 can provoke polyploidy in wound healing and then shut it down when unsuccessful.
Losick said she discovered what is now the central focus of her research almost by accident. As a postdoctoral researcher at the Carnegie Institution for 科学 in 2008, she focused her expertise as a microbiologist on stem cells.
But as she and others studied how wounds heal in fruit flies, 她注意到伤口周围有不寻常的细胞. 它们不是干细胞, but larger cells that turned out to be stuffed with multiple copies of their genome, 然而它不再产生新的细胞.
“When we looked at the tissue, it was clear they were not dividing,洛西克说. “我们看到了这些巨大细胞的形成. Normally, cells divide into the same as what they were before. 但它们不是通过细胞分裂再生的. 细胞逐渐变大以愈合伤口.”
Using the fruit fly model, Losick has discovered that there are multiple routes to wound healing. Beyond the typical response of regeneration through cell division, she and her colleagues have found that cells can also be replaced by stimulating existing cells to grow in size by becoming polyploid, a process they have dubbed wound-induced polyploidization.
What remains unknown is why under conditions of stress, 就像受伤, 老化, 和疾病, 多倍体细胞经常出现? And how do polyploid cells function during these stress responses?
“We are trying to understand what stress signals stimulate polyploid cells to arise, so one day we can promote them when they are doing something good for our tissues, or inhibit them when they are doing something bad like causing 疾病,洛西克说. “But we need to know how these cells affect the organ physiologically: Is it functioning well, 或者长期这些细胞会导致功能障碍?”
Losick, whose work is supported by the National Institutes of Health, said the facility of the fruit fly model allows her to incorporate undergraduates into her research.
“现在我的实验室里有五名本科生. It is exciting to see them make discoveries and know that one day someone is going to be using that to heal an eye, 或者肾脏, 或者肝脏. 我们在实验室里不这么做, but we can make fundamental discoveries that will go on to benefit humankind.”
Those students can go forth to help make polyploidy a household word.
“We want people to know what it is and why they should care about it. 我们想让它成为下一个“it”单词. That way, people can see why this is so important.”