Source: New York Times
Posted: April 25, 2006
Summary:
The New York Times reports scientists have discovered a trait that helps to determine a cell's fate:
"Biologists at the Broad and Whitehead Institutes in Cambridge, Mass., have studied the system that assigns cells their various identities and identified potentially a crucial trait of how a cell's fate is determined. They have discovered a striking new feature of the chromatin, the specialized protein molecules that protect and control the giant molecules of DNA that lie at the center of every chromosome. The feature explains how embryonic cells are kept in a poised state so that all of the genome's many developmental programs are blocked, yet each is ready to be executed if the cell is assigned to that developmental path."
