Weekly reads: vision, MyoD, liver regen, more

I love stem cell research but experiments that have practical possible future applications in medicine like for vision loss are especially interesting to me. On the other hand basic research on core transcription factor mechanisms like by MyoD also really grab me. We cover some of this stuff and other ground in today’s recommended reads.

Stem cell vision research

Fish eyes grown in a petri dish from embryonic stem cells, Phys Org. Here’s the original eLife paper: “Fish primary embryonic pluripotent cells assemble into retinal tissue mirroring in vivo early eye development.”

I covered another related paper a few weeks back where human brain organoids were grown with eye-like structures.

Here’s another recent paper in this stem cells for vision research space in Stem Cell Reports: Synaptic repair and vision restoration in advanced degenerating eyes by transplantation of retinal progenitor cells.

Other notable papers

• Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Macrophages Ameliorate Liver Fibrosis, Stem Cells. This is really cool paper from Dan Kaufman’s lab at UCSD.
• Testing the super-enhancer concept, Nat Rev Genetics. Do some of you not believe in super-enhancers? If you are in that group, what makes you skeptical?
• Human inducible pluripotent stem cells: Realization of initial promise in drug discovery, Cell Stem Cell review.
• Stem cell-derived neurons reflect features of protein networks, neuropathology, and cognitive outcome of their aged human donors, Neuron.
• Engineered 3D vessel-on-chip using hiPSC-derived endothelial- and vascular smooth muscle cells, Stem Cell Reports.

• Age-dependent instability of mature neuronal fate in induced neurons from Alzheimer’s patients, Cell Stem Cell.

• Dissecting dual roles of MyoD during lineage conversion to mature myocytes and myogenic stem cells, G&D. This is a cool paper by a team led by Konrad Hochedlinger. As a grad student I did some work on MyoD cooperating with Hox proteins with my great mentor Mark Kamps. Then also see this follow-up paper.

• Inflation-collapse dynamics drive patterning and morphogenesis in intestinal organoids, Cell Stem Cell.