March 14, 2017 An international research team, led by scientists at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, has created the first cellular model of anorexia nervosa (AN), reprogramming induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) derived from adolescent females with the eating disorder. Writing in the March 14th issue of Translational Psychiatry, the scientists said the resulting AN neuronsthe disease in a dishrevealed a novel gene that appears to contribute to AN pathophysiology, buttressing the idea that AN has a strong genetic factor. The proof-of-concept approach, they said, provides a new tool to investigate the elusive and largely unknown molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying the disease. "Anorexia is a very complicated, multifactorial neurodevelopmental disorder," said Alysson Muotri, PhD, professor in the UC San Diego School of Medicine departments of Pediatrics and Cellular and Molecular Medicine, director of the UC San Diego Stem Cell Program and a member of the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine. "It has proved to be a very difficult disease to study, let alone treat. We don't actually have good experimental models for eating disorders. In fact, there are no treatments to reverse AN symptoms." Primarily affecting young female adolescents between ages 15 and 19, AN is … Continue reading →

Some heritable but unstable genetic mutations that are passed from parent to affected offspring may not be easy to investigate using current human-induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC) modeling techniques, according to research conducted at The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published March 14, in the journalStem Cell Reports. The study serves to caution stem cell biologists that certain rare mutations, like the ones described in the study, are difficult to recreate in laboratory-produced stem cells. Stem cell-based disease modeling involves taking cells from patients, such as skin cells, and introducing genes that reprogram the cells into human-induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs). These "master cells" are unspecialized, meaning they can be pushed to become any type of mature cell needed for research, such as skin, liver or brain. The hiPSCs are capable of renewing themselves over a long period of time, and this emerging stem cell modeling technique is helping elucidate the genetic and cellular mechanisms of many different disorders. "Our study describes how a complex chromosomal rearrangement genetically passed by a patient with psychosis to her affected son was not well recreated in laboratory-produced stem cells," says Kristen Brennand, Ph.D, Associate Professor of Genetics and Genomic Sciences, … Continue reading →

Scientists from the University of Cambridge have determined the first 3D structures of mammalian genomes from individual cells. For the first time, researchers from the University of Cambridge were able to determine the 3D structure of an active mouse genome in embryonic stem cells. Tim Stevens and his colleagues used a combination of imaging and measurements that reveal DNA interactionsto unravel how the DNA is folded together.This could lead tonew insights into the regulation of gene expression in health and disease. Every cell in our body contains the same DNA molecules and thusthe same set of genes. Still,our blood cells differ fundamentally from our skin cells. The basis for this isgene regulation, meaning that different cells will not express every gene encoded on our DNA but only a specific subset. An exciting new avenue for our understanding of gene regulation is the importance of the 3D DNA structure. Regulatory regions within our DNA play a major role in regulating gene expression, but arequirement is that the regions come into spatial contact with the associated genes. It is well known today, that the way the DNA is folded within the cell is tightlyregulated and determines the contact between different regulatory regions … Continue reading →

A team of scientists from the University of Cambridge has made revolutionary news because for the first time ever an artificial mouse embryo has been grown using stem cells. This is fantastic news for the researchers as understanding the beginning stages of embryo formation could prove essential in understanding what two thirds of all human pregnancies fail at this time. While attempting to grow embryos is not a new feat, its one thats had very limited success over the years. This is mainly due to the fact that early embryo development needs different cell types to work closely with one another. However, the new study demonstrates how embryos can actually be grown using a combination of genetically-modified mouse ESCs and TSCs along with an extracellular matrix. Both the embryonic and extra-embryonic cells start to talk to each other and become organized into a structure that looks like and behaves like an embryo, said Professor Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, leader of the research. She continues, It has anatomically correct regions that develop in the right place and at the right time. We knew that interactions between the different types of stem cell are important for development, but the striking thing that our new … Continue reading →