In collaboration with Keio University, a research group at Tohoku University has developed a new cell culture method and succeeded in bringing mouse somatic cells closer to germ cells.
Germ cells have the property of producing next-generation individuals through fertilization (ontogeny totipotency), but somatic cells do not.To elucidate these differences in properties and regulatory mechanisms, the research group decided to directly induce germ cells from somatic cells in culture.Somatic cells have not been successfully converted to germ cells so far.
The gene set of cells is originally the same, and there is a mechanism to determine which gene is expressed during cell differentiation.This is a regulatory mechanism of gene expression called epigenetic regulation by methylation of DNA and methylation of histone proteins bound to DNA.This time, as a strategy to directly induce germ cells from somatic cells, it was decided to induce the expression of genes that are not expressed in somatic cells but are expressed in germ cells.
To this end, mouse fetal fibroblasts, along with some small molecule compounds, were cultured for several days using the RNA interference method, a technique that reduces the function of specific genes.As a result, the expression of genes originally expressed only in germ cells increased, and the overall expression of genes also approached germ cells, although the expression level was low.In addition, the expression of genes specific to some tissues other than germ cells was also induced.This suggests that the expression of tissue-specific genes, including germ cell-specific genes, is suppressed via epigenetic regulation.
In the future, if germ cells can be produced from normal cells that make up the body, such as skin cells, it will lead to breeding of industrial animals, proliferation of endangered animals, and ultimately human reproductive medicine. There is a possibility.
