You must have heard about blood stem cells once in your life. And you might think about how they are useful to us in treating diseases and injuries, and why they are always highlighted by the researchers.
What are stem cells?
Stem cells are the special cells in the human body that can develop into many types of cells. This can be from muscle cells to brain cells. Sometimes they can also fix the damaged tissues.
There are two types of stem cells:
Embryonic stem cells
Adult stem cells.
Embryonic Stem Cells: These cells come from embryos of 3-5 days old. At this stage, the embryo is called a blastocyst, having about 150 cells. These have more ability to divide into more stem cells or change to different cells.
Adult Stem Cells: These cells are less in adult tissue. They are mainly found in bone marrow or fat. They have less ability to give rise to various cells, unlike embryonic stem cells.
Until recently, it was thought that adult stem cells could only produce similar types of cells, like bone marrow stems may only produce blood cells.
However, advancing research suggests that bone marrow stem cells may be able to create bone or heart cells.
Key regulators of blood stem cells.
In new research by scientists, they found a protein that plans how DNA is wrapped around the chromosome, which plays a major role in the healthy functioning of blood stem cells. This protein is known as histone H3.3.
Scientists assessed H3.3's role in blood stem cells also known as hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs)
Some HSCs stay in uncommitted states where they survive long term and renew themselves, while others differentiate themselves to produce different types of cells.
H3.3 plays a crucial role in both processes.
There could be many abnormalities and low survival of HSCs and an imbalance in the type of blood cells produced if we delete this protein.
HSCs are the most important part of studied stem cells because of their importance in the health sector.
However, how HSCs coordinate their self-renew and differentiation into different blood cell types in a harmonious way is still a mystery to a great extent. But this study at the molecular level helps the researchers for further investigations.
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