Developing Sperm Used in the Creation of Stem Cells

Scientists at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have realized that the discovery of how to revert adult cells into their elemental stem cell state might hold the key to what exactly stem cell therapy can accomplish. Through their research, these scientists have been able to discover those key molecular players that have mainly been accountable for the fruit fly sperm cells reversion process. In an online report that was published in Cell Stem Cell, it was noted that two very important proteins- Jak and STAT- had been responsible for redirecting sperm becoming cells into stem cells. An associate professor of cell biology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Dr. Erika Matunis stated that earlier research conducted by the group showed that it was possible to convert sperm into stem cell, although the way to do so still remained a mystery. “Dedifferentiation is an extremely motivating and appealing wonder that has had its occurrence in a variety of stem cell populations and as such, we wanted to know everything that we could about the process,” says Dr. Matunis.

Similar to stem cells, the fly testis also contained nine stem cells that were divided to create daughter cells. Out of these two, one was differentiated into an adult cell or a sperm cell while the other remained a stem cell. The research team at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine genetically altered the flies in order to find out the reason behind the dedifferentiation of these sperm cells. The flies were altered so that both the cells would transform into sperm resulting in the stem cell population of the testes becoming nothing. A week after the genetic modification, it was found that the two stem cells had repopulated from the fly testes.

It had long been suspected that two proteins, Jak and STAT were not only known to work together in helping stem cells, but were also responsible for dedifferentiation. “By genetically altering the flies, we were able to reduce the amount of activity in the STAT and Jak proteins. We now know that it is possible to interfere with the process of dedifferentiation by interfering with these two proteins in the fly testis.

The team realized that fewer cells would revert back to stem cells if there was interference with the two proteins. By counting the number of cells it was found that unlike normal Jak-STAT activity where 97% of the testes regained stem cells, such interference caused merely 60% of the testes to regain stem cells.