The Chinese academy of sciences has made important progress in regulating the fate of stem cells

Adult stem cells (acscs) are a few cells with unlimited proliferation, undifferentiated or low differentiation and multiple or one differentiation potential. Stem cells usually exist in a special microenvironment, where cells interact with stem cells through signaling molecules to further regulate the fate of stem cells, self-renewal or differentiation.

Many signaling pathways are known to play a role in determining the fate of stem cells, but how stem cells and their differentiated daughter cells respond and interpret signals from microenvironment is one of the basic scientific questions in the research of stem cell biology.

On December 10 issuing of the Cell (Cell), published a latest research institute of zoology, Chinese academy of sciences, the researchers found that stem cells differentiated daughter cells through the Fused/Smurf complex active antagonism BMP signals from the microenvironment, thus between stem cells and differentiated daughter cells produced steep BMP response gradient, asymmetric split, in turn, promote stem cells.

The authors also discovered that the complex formed between Fused and the ubiquitin connectase Smurf Fused to regulate the ubiquitination of the BMP receptor protein Tkv and its stability. The scanning analysis of the mutant showed that the phosphorylation of serine at Tkv238 was very important for the ubiquitination and stability of Tkv, and the Fused dependent on the phosphorylation of Tkv to regulate the stability.

In collaboration with a laboratory at tsinghua university, the institute set up a research system on the zebrafish embryo and human cell lines and discovered that Fused in vertebrates is equally antagonistic to BMP/TGF-? So it was revealed that the regulatory mechanism mediated by the Fused protein is evolutionallyconserved and its vital role in regulating the fate of stem cells and in the development of animals.