Alvarez-Dolado Manuel, Pardal Ricardo, Garcia-Verdugo Jose M, Fike John R, Lee Hyun O, Pfeffer Klaus, Lois Carlos, Morrison Sean J, Alvarez-Buylla Arturo
Department of Neurological Surgery, University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, California 94143-0520, USA.
Nature. 2003 Oct 30;425(6961):968-73. doi: 10.1038/nature02069. Epub 2003 Oct 12.
Recent studies have suggested that bone marrow cells possess a broad differentiation potential, being able to form new liver cells, cardiomyocytes and neurons. Several groups have attributed this apparent plasticity to 'transdifferentiation'. Others, however, have suggested that cell fusion could explain these results. Using a simple method based on Cre/lox recombination to detect cell fusion events, we demonstrate that bone-marrow-derived cells (BMDCs) fuse spontaneously with neural progenitors in vitro. Furthermore, bone marrow transplantation demonstrates that BMDCs fuse in vivo with hepatocytes in liver, Purkinje neurons in the brain and cardiac muscle in the heart, resulting in the formation of multinucleated cells. No evidence of transdifferentiation without fusion was observed in these tissues. These observations provide the first in vivo evidence for cell fusion of BMDCs with neurons and cardiomyocytes, raising the possibility that cell fusion may contribute to the development or maintenance of these key cell types.
最近的研究表明，骨髓细胞具有广泛的分化潜能，能够形成新的肝细胞、心肌细胞和神经元。有几个研究小组将这种明显的可塑性归因于“转分化”。然而，其他一些研究人员则认为细胞融合可以解释这些结果。我们采用一种基于Cre/lox重组的简单方法来检测细胞融合事件，结果表明骨髓来源的细胞（BMDCs）在体外能与神经祖细胞自发融合。此外，骨髓移植实验表明，BMDCs在体内能与肝脏中的肝细胞、大脑中的浦肯野神经元以及心脏中的心肌细胞融合，从而形成多核细胞。在这些组织中未观察到无融合的转分化证据。这些观察结果首次提供了BMDCs与神经元和心肌细胞发生细胞融合的体内证据，这增加了细胞融合可能有助于这些关键细胞类型的发育或维持的可能性。
