Source: University of California - Los Angeles
Date: March 12, 2012
Summary:
UCLA stem cell researchers have shown that insulin and nutrition prevent blood stem cells from differentiating into mature blood cells in Drosophila, the common fruit fly, a finding that has implications for studying inflammatory response and blood development in response to dietary changes in humans.
Keeping blood stem cells, or progenitor cells, from differentiating into blood cells is important as blood stem cells are needed to create the blood supply for the adult fruit fly. The study found that the blood stem cells are receiving systemic signals from insulin and nutritional factors, in this case essential amino acids, that helped them to maintain their “stemness,” said study senior author Utpal Banerjee, the Irving and Jean Stone Professor and chairman of molecular, cell and developmental biology in the UCLA Division of Life Sciences and a researcher with the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine at UCLA.
The study appeared March 11 in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Cell Biology.
