A relative of corals and jellyfish, which can live for thousands of years, has been used to study the developmental potential of adult stem cells.
A research team in the Centre for Chromosome Biology, University of Galway, selected the cnidarian Hydractinia - a creature which is a close relative of jellyfish – for the project.
Cnidarians are a group of animals that includes corals and jellyfish and can be easily grown in the laboratory.
They have regenerative abilities and don’t appear to age during their life span extending over several thousand years.
The study, published in the international journal Current Biology, was led by Professor Uri Frank and PhD student Áine Varley,
They established this animal as a “model organism” for stem cell research, including the development of genetic tools that allow the generation of transgenic animals.
A major question in stem cell biology is the ability of stem cells to generate other cell types, such as neurons and muscle, throughout life, the team explains.
The team says it addressed the problem by transplanting a single stem cell from a donor animal to a recipient.
“The single transplanted stem cell was genetically labelled by fluorescent dyes, making it visible in the tissue of the recipient,” they explain.
After several months, progeny of the single transplanted stem cell gradually displaced the recipient’s own cells, they found.
“Eventually, a complete takeover occurred, thereby the recipient animal became genetically identical to the donor,” they say.
“Cnidarians are known for their exceptional regenerative ability,” Varley said.
“ Many of these animals can regenerate whole bodies from small tissue fragments,” she said.
“ Another unusual feature of cnidarians is the apparent lack of ageing; indeed, some cnidarians, such as corals, are known to live for thousands of years without experiencing any decline in their health,” she noted.
“These fantastic traits, which are uncommon in animals, are thought to depend on a population of adult stem cells that behave like embryonic cells in that they can renew all tissues, continuously,” she said.
“Hydractinia adult stem cells are functionally similar to human embryonic cells,” Prof Frank said.
“ The technology developed in this project allows us easy access to embryonic-like cells in an adult animal. The study has implications on our understanding of how stem cells function to contribute to tissue regeneration,” Frank said.
