Complex signaling between blood and stem cells controls regeneration in fly gut
Monday, May 25, 2015 - 10:00
in Biology & Nature
Having a healthy gut may well depend on maintaining a complex signaling dance between immune cells and the stem cells that line the intestine. Scientists at the Buck Institute are now reporting significant new insight into how these complex interactions control intestinal regeneration after a bacterial infection. It's a dance that ensures repair after a challenge, but that also goes awry in aging fruit flies—the work thus offers important new clues into the potential causes of age-related human maladies, such as irritable bowel syndrome, leaky gut and colorectal cancer.