They discover key aspects of the cellular 'instruction manual' that forms the human body, a fundamental knowledge to fight diseases

The epigenetics in stem cells and cancer research group of the ibs.GRANADA and the University of Granada, has provided new data to understand how the human body is formed from a single initial cell or zygote. This knowledge could be essential to combat cancer and diseases associated with aging.

The finding may contribute in the future to the design of personalized therapies to treat different symptoms and diseases associated with aging, through drugs based on epigenetic inhibitors that are currently under development.

Researchers from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology II of the UGR, attached to the Pfizer Center - University of Granada - Andalusian Board of Genomics and Oncology Research (GENYO) and the Biosanitary Research Institute ibs.Granada, have shown that changes in the activity of 'Polycomb' epigenetic factors during the cell cycle regulate the decision of embryonic stem cells to multiply or become different tissues.

David Landeira, principal investigator of the group and author responsible for this work, points out that "the study reveals a key aspect to understand how the different organs that make up our body are capable of carrying out different functions, even though they all share the same genome or book Instructions".

The research, published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications, has been carried out in collaboration with the laboratories of Álvaro Rada-Iglesias (IBBTEC-CSIC) and Rob Klose (Oxford University). Scientists have shown that 'Polycomb' epigenetic regulators vary their activity depending on when the embryonic stem cells are in the cell cycle. This discovery demonstrates that the epigenetic modulators that decide which part of our genome is turned on or off during our development are able to communicate with the cell cycle machinery, which allows cells to duplicate exponentially. The study, together with future discoveries, will allow us to understand the mechanism by which the human body is formed and subsequently degenerates over time.

The formation of a human being begins after the fertilization of an egg by a sperm, which gives rise to a cell called a zygote. This cell contains genetic information called DNA or genome, which results from a random mixture of the genomes of the father and the mother. The zygote must multiply extraordinarily to produce the approximately 30 trillion different cells that make up the adult organism.

Furthermore, during this expansion process, epigenetic factors allow cells to decide which part of their genome to turn on and which part to keep off. This gives them different functional capacities essential for the functioning of our organs. Over time, cells lose the ability to precisely maintain their function, leading to diseases associated with aging, including cancer. Therefore, understanding the molecular mechanisms that determine how cells decide to maintain their identity or transform into something different, while expanding exponentially, is a fundamental question to understand the basis of the formation of life and human disease.

Bibliographic reference:

Asenjo, HG, M. Alcazar-Fabra, M. Espinosa-Martínez, L. Lopez-Onieva, A. Gallardo, E. Dimitrova, A. Feldmann, T. Pachano, J. Martorell-Marugán, P. Carmona-Sáez, A. Sanchez-Pozo, A. Rada-Iglesias, RJ Klose and D. Landeira (2023). “Changes in PRC1 activity during interphase modulate lineage transition in pluripotent cells.” Nature Communications 14(1): 180.