Question: How do the specific stem cells know what they should become?

Anzy Miller answered on 14 Nov 2013:

Great question! And this is what I’m trying to find out! With questions like this, you should become a scientist 🙂

So I’ll talk first about embryonic stem cells as that’s what I’m working with. In the embryo – all the tissues and organs are made every time, so the process of making a baby happens correctly pretty much all of the time. So the cells know what they have to make, but how do they know?

We know there are certain signals that the cells need to become certain types of cells, but how each cell sees this signal (and uses it to change) we don’t know. And there are lots of people working on this problem. I’m trying to tackle this as well, by studying a particular protein (called Sall4). Without this protein embryos don’t survive – so we know this protein is important. But we don’t know what its doing, or why its important. And that’s what I’m trying to figure out!

🙂