Weekly reads: NIH genome editing, gut stem cells & diet, more

The first of the month often brings loads of new papers as new issues of journals come out so we have a wave of new stem cell papers.

By the way, be sure to enter our stem cell picture contest to try to win $100 or a bundle of stem cell swag. There’s less than 2 weeks to enter now.

NIH gene-editing efforts

• Tackling neurodegenerative diseases with genomic engineering: A new stem cell initiative from the NIH, Neuron
• The NIH Somatic Cell Genome Editing program, Nature. They given an overview of their gene-editing consortium.

Stem cells in the gut and diet

• white regulates proliferative homeostasis of intestinal stem cells during ageing in Drosophila, Nature Metabolism. Gene naming in the Drososphila field is often funny. There was, of course, sonic hedgehog.  The mammalian homolog of white is ABCG2.
• High-fat diet activates a PPAR-δ program to enhance intestinal stem cell function, Cell Stem Cell. There’s growing interest in the relationship between diet and stem cells. Since this recommended reads from a few months back on capsaicin and stem cells.

More stem cell papers

• Combination therapy with Treg and mesenchymal stromal cells enhances potency and attenuation of inflammation after traumatic brain injury compared to monotherapy, Stem Cells. This is a rat study looking at combination of T cells and MSCs for TBI. Here’s a review of the article.
• Attrition of X Chromosome Inactivation in Aged Hematopoietic Stem Cells, Stem Cell Reports
• Dynamic spatiotemporal coordination of neural stem cell fate decisions occurs through local feedback in the adult vertebrate brain, Cell Stem Cell.
• A step closer to autologous cell therapy for Parkinson’s disease, Cell Stem Cell. I wonder about where we’ll be in 10 years with cell therapy for Parkinson’s. Will autologous or allogeneic approaches will seem more promising then? I’ve got a new more general overview of the difference between allogeneic and autologous stem cell therapies. In the big picture it’s also quite interesting how allogeneic iPS cell clinical efforts have pushed forward so much when their patient-specific nature is such a plus.
• Widespread reorganisation of pluripotent factor binding and gene regulatory interactions between human pluripotent states, Nature Communication. They report on 3D chromatin hubs in naive and primed human pluripotent stem cells. See part of Fig. 1d above. I love epigenomic research.