Stem Cells: Acquiring, Remembering and Recalling Past Experiences

Date

Mar 13, 2025

Time

11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Speaker

Elaine Fuchs

Affiliation

Howard Hughes Medical Institute, The Rockefeller University, New York

Series

MPI-CBG Thursday Seminar

Language

en

Main Topic

Biologie

Host

Sandra Scharaw

Description

According to Webster, memory “is the power or process of reproducing or recalling what has been learned and retained especially through associative mechanisms.” It has generally been thought to be the privilege of the brain, and indeed as most neurons are long-lived, they have the capacity to store memories of their experiences and recall them months later. However many tissues of our body learn from their past experiences, and like memories that occur in the brain, tissue memories have both beneficial and maladaptive consequences. An excellent example of this is our barrier epithelial tissues such as the skin, lung and gut, which are the first line of defense between our body and the outside world. These tissues harbor reservoirs of long-lived, self-renewing stem cells that rejuvenate the barrier during normal homeostasis and restore it when damaged by wounds, mechanical stress, ultraviolet radiation, pathogens and irritants. How do epithelial stem cells equip themselves to cope with these harmful stresses? My laboratory discovered that when stem cells encounter diverse stresses, their chromatin develops and stores epigenetic memories with profound consequences. We focus on dissecting the complex interactions between stem cells and their environment that are evolutionarily optimized for tissue fitness but go awry in chronic inflammation and cancer.

Last modified: Mar 9, 2025, 7:39:28 AM