Identification of three genes that determine the stemness of gastric tissue stem cells

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Identification of three genes that determine the stemness of gastric tissue stem cells

The human body consists of about 60 trillion cells that are renewed day by day to maintain homeostasis of body tissues. In particular, cells of the digestive tract are renewed completely within several weeks thanks to vigorous proliferation where tissue stem cells of every tissue play critical roles in supplying those cells. Tissue stem cells play essential roles in various phenomena such as histogenesis and recovery from damage by producing differentiated cells while dividing. They do this by producing identical cells (self-renewal) or by differentiating into other types of cells. The research team led by Profs. Murakami and Barker of the Cancer Research Institute, Kanazawa University revealed the presence of gastric tissue stem cells expressing the Lgr5 gene, a tissue stem cell marker at the gastric gland base in the gastric tissue, the stemness of which could be suppressed by Wnt signaling (Leushacke M. et al., Nat. Cell Biol., 2017). However, due to the technical difficulty of further detailed in vivo verification, most of the molecular mechanisms related to tissue stem cells regulated by Wnt signaling remained a mystery.

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