Amoyel Lab paper determines the sequence of events that must occur for stem cells to differentiate

Research carried out in the Amoyel Lab (UCL Cell and Developmental Biology) exploited the fact that all the signals controlling stem cell behaviour are well understood in the fly testis, and their analyses revealed two findings. Firstly, that differentiation is not a default that occurs upon loss of self-renewal signalling, but has to be actively induced. Secondly, that prior to differentiation, stem cells enter a reversible primed state, but that the final commitment occurs later, upon interaction with other cells that make up the tissue. They think these findings are particularly important as they reveal for the first time that adult stem cells behave similarly to embryonic stem cells, which have a "ground state" in which they can self-renew in the absence of external stimuli.

Links: 

• Germ cells commit somatic stem cells to differentiation following priming by PI3K/Tor activity in the Drosophila testis (PLoS Genetics)
• Amoyel Lab website

Image:

Model of CySC differentiation