London, June 16 (IANS) A protein called ‘Flower’, which marks weaker cells for elimination in favour of fitter ones, could help scientists understand how conflict resolution works at the microscopic level, says a new study of the Spanish National Cancer Centre (SNCC) in Madrid.
The research further adds to scientists’ understanding of a developmental process of ‘cell competition’ and may provide some insight into pathological conditions that involve imbalances in cell fitness, such as cancer.
Cell competition may serve as a way to ensure that only the fittest cells contribute to the growing organism.
During development, a cell compares its metabolic rates with neighbouring cells and, as a result, the best adapted cells ‘win’ and proliferate at the expense of neighbours that ‘lose’ and are eliminated.
This process of cell competition was first described in the fruit fly, in larval structures called imaginal discs that give rise to adult body parts, such as the wings.
However, all the known regulators of cell competition are also known to affect cell growth and survival in general, so it has been hard to determine what benefit animals derive from this particular type of cellular melee.
‘We were interested in investigating how cells of fly wing imaginal discs distinguish winners from losers during cell competition,’ explains senior study author, Eduardo Moreno from SNCC.
Moreno’s team identified several factors involved in the process, including Flower, a protein found in the cell membrane of multicellular animals.
They show that three different forms of the Flower protein act as cellular ‘tags’ that weigh in on win-lose decisions.
‘Taken together, our results suggest that ‘Flower’ isoforms generate the scaffold that is required and sufficient to label cells as winners and losers during competitive interactions among cells,’ concludes Moreno.
‘The extracellular code composed by the ‘Flower’ isoforms may have biomedical implications beyond cell competition because imbalances in cell fitness also appear during ageing, cancer formation and metastasis,’ he adds.
The specific role for ‘Flower’ in cell competition makes it a unique focus for future studies to understand the function of cell competition in isolation from other signals that control tissue growth, said a SNCC release.
These findings were published by Cell Press in Developmental Cell.
