UMD researchers discover a way that animals keep their cells identical
Tuesday, July 26, 2016 - 14:51
in Biology & Nature
Roundworms (Caenorhabditis elegans) with a disabled eri-1 gene can lose their ability to control repetitive DNA. In the absence of eri-1, even two age-matched siblings can look dramatically different. Cancers arise in skin, muscle, liver or other types of tissue when one cell becomes different from its neighbors. Although biologists have learned a lot about how tissues form during development, very little is known about how two cells of the same tissue stay identical for an animal's entire lifetime.