Cell proliferation is important in degenerative cancers and diseases

New ways of regulating cell proliferation in humans could be found from a type of mouse that has been engineered to express a fluorescent protein when its cells divide.

Cell proliferation is central to degenerative diseases, where in cancers cells are reproduced too quickly and in other instances where cells reproduce too slowly.

This is why researchers have created a mouse strain in which replicating cells express a fluorescent protein which is destroyed when cell division is finished.

Recognition and isolation of live, replicating cells straight from healthy or diseased tissue in the mice was enabled through labelling replicating cells by green fluorescence. 

With this method, researchers could isolate an atypical populace of replicating cells from the livers of mice and examine the genes that they express, compared with resting liver cells.

Research associate Dr Agnes Klochendler and PhD student Noa Weinberg-Corem at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem found that in duplicating liver cells there is a considerable reduction in gene expression that is accountable for the main liver functions such as amino and fatty acid metabolism.

Professor Yuval Dor from the Institute for Medical Research Israel-Canada (IMRIC) and Dr Amir Eden from the Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, along with colleagues in Denmark and the US conducted this research.

Results of the research showed that when differentiated cells divide, they temporarily move into a less differentiated state.

This has given the scientific community a deeper comprehension of the difference between the two states of proliferation and differentiation in normal cells.

Cells proliferate and are regularly less differentiated in the condition of cancer. By being able to differentiate between genes connected with normal cell divisions and unusual expressed genes in tumours, replication markers may be recognised.

Cancer and regenerative biology, along with other conditions such as diabetes could all benefit from developing a method to regulate these proliferating cells.

Posted by Fiona Griffiths