Science, Space and Technology News 2024
Research using fruit flies has revealed activin signaling as a key mechanism in gut plasticity, influencing its ability to shrink and expand in response to nutrient availability. This finding has implications for understanding organ adaptation and opens new pathways for exploring treatments for colorectal cancer linked to activin signaling disruptions.
One of the most striking examples of gut plasticity can be observed in animals that are exposed to prolonged periods of fasting, such as hibernating animals or phyton snakes that goes for months without eating, where the gut shrinks with as much as 50%, but recovers in size following a few days of re-feeding. Importantly, the capacity of the gut to undergo resizing is broadly conserved.
Ditte S. Andersen continues: “We have identified activins as critical regulators of this process. In nutrient-restrictive conditions, activin signaling is strongly repressed, while it is reactivated and required for progenitor maturation and gut resizing in response to refeeding. Activin-dependent resizing of the gut is physiologically important as inhibition of activin signaling reduces survival of flies to intermittent fasting.
Regulators of organ plasticity are essential for host adaptation to an ever-changing environment, however, the same signals are often deregulated in cancers. Indeed, mutations affecting activin signaling are frequent in cancer cells in a variety of tissues.
Reference: “Drosophila activins adapt gut size to food intake and promote regenerative growth” by Christian F. Christensen, Quentin Laurichesse, Rihab Loudhaief, Julien Colombani and Ditte S. Andersen, 4 January 2024,SciTechDaily: Home of the best science and technology news since 1998. Keep up with the latest scitech news via email or social media.
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