#germline

Counting X’s

A study in fruit flies provides greater understanding of the mechanisms regulating sex determination (according to the number of X chromosomes) in the germline (that ultimately forms eggs or sperm) – the role of a transcription factor called sisterless A (sisA) revealed

Read the published research article here

Image from work by Raghav Goyal, Ellen Baxter and Mark Van Doren

Department of Biology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in eLife (reviewed preprint), August 2024

Sending Male

When sperm meets egg big changes are afoot. But even before, preparing these germline cells requires many careful transformations in the body. Here researchers replicate some of these milestones in the lab, sending mouse stem cells on a path towards becoming sperm. Along the way the team grow clusters of ‘germline stem cell-like cells’ (highlighted here in red) in different conditions, searching for those that specialise into early sperm – known as spermatogonia (green) – most efficiently. To compare their lab-grown spermatogonia with natural mouse cells, the researchers inject them into mouse testes, letting them develop and mature before using them to fertilise real eggs. These cells may offer insights into mammalian spermatogenesis, but in the future similar techniques may also aid in human fertility.

Written by John Ankers

Image from work by Yukiko Ishikura and colleagues

Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Biology (WPI-ASHBi), Kyoto University, Yoshida-Konoe-cho, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, Japan

Image copyright Elsevier 2021. Reproduced with permission

Published in Cell Stem Cell, September 2021

STRA8 to Go

Cell division drives the constant flow of life. This replication can take two forms: mitosis, when cells duplicate to two identical copies, and meiosis, the link between generations – the germ line – that produces sperm or egg cells. Studying how meiosis gets going is difficult because it’s hard to collect enough cells just as they begin. But a new chemical trick that prompts many cells to start at once produced a large enough sample for researchers to see what was going on. STRA8 (highlighted in magenta in the mouse testis pictured) is a protein produced by germ line cells (green), but its exact role in meiosis was a mystery. A closer look revealed that it sparks meiosis into action by binding to thousands of different genes, and kicking them into gear. Discovering molecular mechanisms of fundamental life processes, like this wide-reaching green light, is the first step in deducing what goes wrong during disease.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Image by Mina Kojima, Whitehead Institute

Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Cambridge, MA, USA

Image copyright held by the original authors

Research published in eLife, February 2019

Science, Volume 389, Issue 6761, Page 720-723, August 2025. Summary Without knowing the specific content of the referenced Science article (Vol. 389, Issue 6761, pp. 720-723, August 2025), I can only provide a generic summary. This article, published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, likely presents original research, a review of existing research, or a commentary on a relevant scientific…

Germline whole exome sequencing reveals potential role of hereditary predisposition in small cell lung cancer

Lung CA seen on CXR. Credit: James Heilman, MD/Wikipedia A study presented today by Dr. Nobuyuki Takahashi of the Center for Cancer Research (CCR), National Cancer Institute (NCI), Bethesda, Md. at the IASLC World Conference on Lung Cancer Singapore demonstrates that small cell lung cancer (SCLC) may have an inherited predisposition and lays the foundation for understanding the interaction…