Share thisSome germ cells stay offline, while others develop into skin, bones, and organs. Dr Susana M. Chuva de Sousa Lopes, Assistant Professor of Germ Cell and Stem Cell Biology at Leiden University Medical Center, leads a team dedicated to investigating why this occurs.
You learned in basic biology how we come into being. Egg and sperm unite, the one cell multiplies forming a four-cell sphere, and the multiplying continues until there are enough cells to start the age-old dance down the roads of tissue differentiation (Figure 1). When each cell achieves its final form and reaches its assigned place, all join hands to house a new life.
This would be old news except for two intriguing updates.
There is a window during development when some cells can abandon the original plan for differentiation and become almost any among the body’s approximately 200 cell varieties. They are the embryonic stem cells—currently of worldwide interest because they may allow us to repair tissue should disease strike or advanced age bring the inevitable wearing out.
Moreover another cluster of cells, much less celebrated, may offer potential to understand not only how life transfers but how we might preserve the possibility for transferring life when sterility or disease strike or a woman delays childbearing— and in the longer term, how we might intervene earlier to prevent disease in the first instance.
