Cells to Your Liking

01.10.2003

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A developing embryo of the Drosophila fruit fly

Though the piano keyboard consists of only 88 keys, it can produce infinite melodies. Similarly, only five communication pathways, generating any one of a vast array of combinations, determine the future of each embryonic cell (whether it will evolve into a muscle or blood cell, for example). Accidents along these pathways may cause a wide variety of illnesses, including different types of cancer.

Prof. Ben-Zion Shilo of the Weizmann Institute's Molecular Genetics Department has succeeded in identifying such a communication pathway and has also witnessed it in action. "A pathway starts out with a signal received by the cell from the 'outside world,' " says Shilo. "Hormones, for example, bind to the cell's receptors and send a 'communicative message' that passes from molecule to molecule, until the last in the chain penetrates the cell's nucleus and causes the expression of a group of genes."

The pathways themselves have been preserved throughout evolution and are found in almost all multicellular organisms – from worms to human beings. Thus the communication pathway controlling eye development in the fruit fly has a human version as well. 

Understanding the basic mechanisms of embryonic development may one day offer new horizons to those afflicted with a wide range of diseases. Scientists envisage a day when cells taken from the umbilical cord will be induced to become brain cells for implantation in Parkinson's Disease patients or insulin-producing pancreas cells for juvenile diabetes sufferers.

 

Prof. Ben-Zion Shilo

Prof. Shilo’s research is supported by the Wolfson Family Charitable Trust. He is the incumbent of the Hilda and Cecil Lewis Professorial Chair in Molecular Genetics.

 

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