scholarly journals Epigenetics, Stem Cells, and Autophagy: Exploring a Path Involving miRNA

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (20) ◽  
pp. 5091 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Balzano ◽  
Ilaria Campesi ◽  
Sara Cruciani ◽  
Giuseppe Garroni ◽  
Emanuela Bellu ◽  
...  

MiRNAs, a small family of non-coding RNA, are now emerging as regulators of stem cell pluripotency, differentiation, and autophagy, thus controlling stem cell behavior. Stem cells are undifferentiated elements capable to acquire specific phenotype under different kind of stimuli, being a main tool for regenerative medicine. Within this context, we have previously shown that stem cells isolated from Wharton jelly multipotent stem cells (WJ-MSCs) exhibit gender differences in the expression of the stemness related gene OCT4 and the epigenetic modulator gene DNA-Methyltransferase (DNMT1). Here, we further analyze this gender difference, evaluating adipogenic and osteogenic differentiation potential, autophagic process, and expression of miR-145, miR-148a, and miR-185 in WJ-MSCs derived from males and females. These miRNAs were selected since they are involved in OCT4 and DNMT1 gene expression, and in stem cell differentiation. Our results indicate a difference in the regulatory circuit involving miR-148a/DNMT1/OCT4 autophagy in male WJ-MSCs as compared to female cells. Moreover, no difference was detected in the expression of the two-differentiation regulating miRNA (miR-145 and miR-185). Taken together, our results highlight a different behavior of WJ-MSCs from males and females, disclosing the chance to better understand cellular processes as autophagy and stemness, usable for future clinical applications.

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chengguang Wu ◽  
Long Chen ◽  
Yi-zhou Huang ◽  
Yongcan Huang ◽  
Ornella Parolini ◽  
...  

Human multipotent stem cell-based therapies have shown remarkable potential in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering applications due to their abilities of self-renewal and differentiation into multiple adult cell types under appropriate conditions. Presently, human multipotent stem cells can be isolated from different sources, but variation among their basic biology can result in suboptimal selection of seed cells in preclinical and clinical research. Thus, the goal of this study was to compare the biological characteristics of multipotent stem cells isolated from human bone marrow, placental decidua basalis, and urine, respectively. First, we found that urine-derived stem cells (USCs) displayed different morphologies compared with other stem cell types. USCs and placenta decidua basalis-derived mesenchymal stem cells (PDB-MSCs) had superior proliferation ability in contrast to bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs); these cells grew to have the highest colony-forming unit (CFU) counts. In phenotypic analysis using flow cytometry, similarity among all stem cell marker expression was found, excluding CD29 and CD105. Regarding stem cell differentiation capability, USCs were observed to have better adipogenic and endothelial abilities as well as vascularization potential compared to BMSCs and PDB-MSCs. As for osteogenic and chondrogenic induction, BMSCs were superior to all three stem cell types. Future therapeutic indications and clinical applications of BMSCs, PDB-MSCs, and USCs should be based on their characteristics, such as growth kinetics and differentiation capabilities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (8) ◽  
pp. 4011
Author(s):  
Brianna Chen ◽  
Dylan McCuaig-Walton ◽  
Sean Tan ◽  
Andrew P. Montgomery ◽  
Bryan W. Day ◽  
...  

Glioblastoma display vast cellular heterogeneity, with glioblastoma stem cells (GSCs) at the apex. The critical role of GSCs in tumour growth and resistance to therapy highlights the need to delineate mechanisms that control stemness and differentiation potential of GSC. Dual-specificity tyrosine phosphorylation-regulated kinase 1A (DYRK1A) regulates neural progenitor cell differentiation, but its role in cancer stem cell differentiation is largely unknown. Herein, we demonstrate that DYRK1A kinase is crucial for the differentiation commitment of glioblastoma stem cells. DYRK1A inhibition insulates the self-renewing population of GSCs from potent differentiation-inducing signals. Mechanistically, we show that DYRK1A promotes differentiation and limits stemness acquisition via deactivation of CDK5, an unconventional kinase recently described as an oncogene. DYRK1A-dependent inactivation of CDK5 results in decreased expression of the stemness gene SOX2 and promotes the commitment of GSC to differentiate. Our investigations of the novel DYRK1A-CDK5-SOX2 pathway provide further insights into the mechanisms underlying glioblastoma stem cell maintenance.


2009 ◽  
Vol 1239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karla Brammer ◽  
Seunghan Oh ◽  
Sungho Jin

AbstractTwo important goals in stem cell research are to control the cell proliferation without differentiation, and also to direct the differentiation into a specific cell lineage when desired. Recent studies indicate that the nanostructures substantially influence the stem cell behavior. It is well known that mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are multipotent stem cells that can differentiate into stromal lineages such as adipocyte, chondrocyte, fibroblast, myocyte, and osteoblast cell types. By examining the cellular behavior of MSCs cultured in vitro on nanostructures, some understanding of the effects that the nanostructures have on the stem cell’s response has been obtained. Here we demonstrate that TiO2 nanotubes produced by anodization on Ti implant surface can regulate human mesenchymal stem cell (hMSC) differentiation towards an osteoblast lineage in the absence of osteogenic inducing factors. Altering the dimensions of nanotubular-shaped titanium oxide surface structures independently allowed either augmented human mesenchymal stem cell (hMSC) adhesion at smaller diameter levels or a specific differentiation of hMSCs into osteoblasts using only the geometric cues. Small (˜30 nm diameter) nanotubes promoted adhesion without noticeable differentiation, while larger (˜70 - 100 nm diameter) nanotubes elicited a dramatic, ˜10 fold stem cell elongation, which induced cytoskeletal stress and selective differentiation into osteoblast-like cells, offering a promising nanotechnology-based route for novel orthopaedics-related hMSC treatments. The fact that a guided and preferential osteogenic differentiation of stem cells can be achieved using substrate nanotopography alone without using potentially toxic, differentiation-inducing chemical agents is significant, which can be useful for future development of novel and enhanced stem cell control and therapeutic implant development.


Blood ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 124 (21) ◽  
pp. SCI-20-SCI-20
Author(s):  
Margaret A. Goodell

Bone marrow failure (BMF), the inability to regenerate the differentiated cells of the blood, has a number of genetic and environmental etiologies, such as mutation of telomere-associated protein genes and immune-related aplastic anemia. Recently, mutations in DNA methyltransferase 3A (DNMT3A) have been found to be associated with approximately 15% of cases of primary myelofibrosis (MF), which can be a cause of BMF. The role of DNMT3A more broadly in hematopoiesis, and specifically in BMF, is currently poorly understood. DNMT3A is one of two de novo DNA methylation enzymes important in developmental fate choice. We showed that Dnmt3a is critical for normal murine hematopoiesis, as hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) from Dnmt3a knockout (KO) mice displayed greatly diminished differentiation potential while their self-renewal ability was markedly increased1, in effect, leading to failure of blood regeneration or BMF. Combined with loss of Dnmt3b, HSCs exhibited a profound differentiation block, mediated in part by an increase of stabilized b-catenin. While we did not initially observe bone marrow pathology or malignancy development in mice transplanted with Dnmt3a KO HSCs, when we aged a large cohort of mice, all mice succumbed to hematologic disease within about 400 days. Roughly one-third of mice developed frank leukemia (acute lymphocytic leukemia or acute myeloid leukemia), one-third developed MDS, and the remainder developed primary myelofibrosis or chronic myelomonocytic leukemia. The pathological characteristics of the mice broadly mirror those of patients, suggesting the Dnmt3a KO mice can serve as a model for human DNMT3A-mutation associated disease. Strikingly, bone marrow of mice with different disease types exhibit distinct DNA methylation features. These will findings and the implications for disease development will be discussed. We are currently investigating the factors that drive different outcomes in the mice, including stressors such as exposure to interferons. We have hypothesized that HSC proliferation accelerates the Dnnmt3a-associated disease phenotypes. We have previously shown that interferons directly impinge on HSCs in the context of infections. Interferons activate HSCs to divide, generating differentiated progeny and cycling HSCs. Repeated interferon stimulation may permanently impair HSC function and bias stem cell output. When combined with loss of Dnmt3a, interferons may promote BMF. We will discuss broadly how external factors such as aging and infection may collaborate with specific genetic determinants to affect long-term hematopoiesis and malignancy development. Reference: Challen GA, Sun D, Jeong M, et al. Dnmt3a is essential for hematopoietic stem cell differentiation. Nat Genet 2012; 44: 23-31 Figure 1 Figure 1. Disclosures No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.


Author(s):  
Yuxuan Zhong ◽  
Xiang Li ◽  
Fanglin Wang ◽  
Shoushuai Wang ◽  
Xiaohong Wang ◽  
...  

The mesenchymal stem cells have multidirectional differentiation potential and can differentiate into adipocytes, osteoblasts, cartilage tissue, muscle cells and so on. The adipogenic differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells is of great significance for the construction of tissue-engineered fat and the treatment of soft tissue defects. Exosomes are nanoscale vesicles secreted by cells and widely exist in body fluids. They are mainly involved in cell communication processes and transferring cargo contents to recipient cells. In addition, exosomes can also promote tissue and organ regeneration. Recent studies have shown that various exosomes can influence the adipogenic differentiation of stem cells. In this review, the effects of exosomes on stem cell differentiation, especially on adipogenic differentiation, will be discussed, and the mechanisms and conclusions will be drawn. The main purpose of studying the role of these exosomes is to understand more comprehensively the influencing factors existing in the process of stem cell differentiation into adipocytes and provide a new idea in adipose tissue engineering research.


Author(s):  
Alexander Halim ◽  
Qing Luo ◽  
Yang Ju ◽  
Guanbin Song

Stem cells are undifferentiated cells which can give rise to any types of cells in our body. Hence, they have been utilized for various applications such as drug testing and disease modeling. However, for the successful of those applications, the survival and differentiation of stem cells into specialized lineages should be well controlled. Growth factors and chemical agents are the most common signals to promote the proliferation and differentiation of stem cells. However, those approaches holds several drawbacks such as the negative side effects, degradation or denaturation, and expensive. To address such limitations, nanomaterials have been recently used as a better approach for controlling stem cells behaviors. Graphene oxide is the derivative of graphene, the first 2D materials in the world. Recently, due to its extraordinary properties and great biological effects on stem cells, many scientists around the world have utilized graphene oxide to enhance the differentiation potential of stem cells. In this mini review, we highlight the key advances about the effects of graphene oxide on controlling stem cell growth and various types of stem cell differentiation. We also discuss the possible molecular mechanisms of graphene oxide in controlling stem cell growth and differentiation.


Nanomaterials ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (9) ◽  
pp. 736 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Halim ◽  
Qing Luo ◽  
Yang Ju ◽  
Guanbin Song

Stem cells are undifferentiated cells that can give rise to any types of cells in our body. Hence, they have been utilized for various applications, such as drug testing and disease modeling. However, for the successful of those applications, the survival and differentiation of stem cells into specialized lineages should be well controlled. Growth factors and chemical agents are the most common signals to promote the proliferation and differentiation of stem cells. However, those approaches holds several drawbacks such as the negative side effects, degradation or denaturation, and expensive. To address such limitations, nanomaterials have been recently used as a better approach for controlling stem cells behaviors. Graphene oxide is the derivative of graphene, the first two-dimensional (2D) materials in the world. Recently, due to its extraordinary properties and great biological effects on stem cells, many scientists around the world have utilized graphene oxide to enhance the differentiation potential of stem cells. In this mini review, we highlight the key advances about the effects of graphene oxide on controlling stem cell growth and various types of stem cell differentiation. We also discuss the possible molecular mechanisms of graphene oxide in controlling stem cell growth and differentiation.


Sensors ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (9) ◽  
pp. 2755 ◽  
Author(s):  
Intan Rosalina Suhito ◽  
Novi Angeline ◽  
Sung-Sik Choo ◽  
Ho Young Woo ◽  
Taejong Paik ◽  
...  

Breakthroughs in the biomedical and regenerative therapy fields have led to the influential ability of stem cells to differentiate into specific types of cells that enable the replacement of injured tissues/organs in the human body. Non-destructive identification of stem cell differentiation is highly necessary to avoid losses of differentiated cells, because most of the techniques generally used as confirmation tools for the successful differentiation of stem cells can result in valuable cells becoming irrecoverable. Regarding this issue, recent studies reported that both Raman spectroscopy and electrochemical sensing possess excellent characteristics for monitoring the behavior of stem cells, including differentiation. In this review, we focus on numerous studies that have investigated the detection of stem cell pluripotency and differentiation in non-invasive and non-destructive manner, mainly by using the Raman and electrochemical methods. Through this review, we present information that could provide scientific or technical motivation to employ or further develop these two techniques for stem cell research and its application.


Blood ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 110 (11) ◽  
pp. 3703-3703
Author(s):  
Gerald A. Colvin ◽  
David Berz ◽  
Mark S. Dooner ◽  
Gerri J. Dooner ◽  
Kevin Johnson ◽  
...  

Abstract Directed differentiation is defined as the ability to program a stem cell at the most primitive level while it still has its reproductive and full proliferative potential. This is in contrast to ex-vivo expansion where the stem cells are forced into specific lineage commitments, limiting the overall therapeutic utility. We have demonstrated differentiation “hotspots” on a cell cycle continuum (Exp Heme35:96, 2007). In this work we showed marked but reversible increases in differentiation potential to megakryocyte and granulocytes at different phases of a single cytokine induced cell cycle passage of highly purified quiescent murine lineagenegative rhodaminelowHoeschtlow (LRH) marrow stem cells. We have reproducibly induced directed stem cell differentiation by capitalizing on inherent changes in sensitivities to inductive cytokine signals in the context of cell cycle position. These cells, when exposed to thrombopoietin, FLT3-ligand and steel factor, synchronously pass through cell cycle. We have found that using a differentiation cytokine cocktail of G-CSF at 0.075ng/ml, GM-CSF at 0.0375ng/ml and steel factor at 50ng/ml, we were able to see enhanced megakaryopoiesis occurring 14-days after culture in those LRH stem cells that were in early to mid S-phase at time of inductive signaling. We have now shown that a megakaryocyte hotspot clusters around 32 hours; the G1/S interface, and that dramatic reversible changes in differentiation potential occur over one hour time intervals. We have confirmed this data by looking at LRH cells through cell cycle transit after initial cell division showing that a megakaryocyte hotspot occurs in two sequential cell cycles and still tied to S-phase at time of inductive signaling of the daughter cells. This hotspot has been demonstrated on a clonal basis, although the kinetics of the hotspot shifts when clonal as opposed to population studies are carried out. An important issue is whether in vitro cytokine exposure, separate from cell cycle status, determines the existence of the hotspot. To address this, we used Hoechst 33342 dye content to assist in separation of different cell cycle fractions (G0–1, early, mid and late components of S, G2/M) of lineage negative Sca-1+ stem cells, a cycling stem/progenitor cell population in which approximately 20% of the cells are in S-phase at isolation. These cells were only exposed to the differentiation cytokines and showed a megakaryocyte hotspot present in only early S-phase cells after 14-days of culture, showing that in vitro cell cycle phase determined the presence of the hotspot, separate from cytokine exposure. These data indicate that differentiation potential of marrow stem cells exists on a cell cycle related continuum and that this potential can be demonstrated on a single cell basis. This suggests a continuum model of stem cell regulation at the stem cell level as opposed to a pure hierarchical model.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 200-204
Author(s):  
Gözde Dursun ◽  
Saurabh Balkrishna Tandale ◽  
Jörg Eschweiler ◽  
Mersedeh Tohidnezhad ◽  
Bernd Markert ◽  
...  

AbstractMethodologies to assess stem cell differentiation in the culturing state are needed for regenerative medicine and tissue engineering techniques. In recent years, convolutional neural networks (CNNs), a class of deep neural networks, have made impressive advancements in image-based classification, recognition and detection tasks. CNNs have been introduced as a non-invasive cell characterization method by learning features directly from image data of unlabeled cells. Furthermore, this approach serves as a rapid and inexpensive methodology with high performance compared to traditional techniques that require complex laboratory procedures including antibody staining and gene expression analysis. Here, we studied the potential of the CNNs approach to recognize stem cell differentiation based on cell morphology utilizing phasecontrast microscopy images.We have examined the differentiation potential of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) into tenocytes, with the treatment of bone morphogenetic protein-12 (BMP-12). After treatment, the phase-contrast images of cells were obtained directly from cell culture flasks to train CNN and the differentiated phenotype of stem cells was characterized by immunostaining. CNN was able to classify the cells into three groups including non-stem cells (chondrocytes), stem cells (BMSCs) and differentiated stem cells (tenocytes) based on their morphology with 92.2 % accuracy. The presented study revealed that CNN performed faster and non-invasive cell classification task compared to traditional methodologies.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document