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Comment
. 2013 Oct 22:2:e01541.
doi: 10.7554/eLife.01541.

What silent mutations say about the human airways

Matthew L Donne  1 , Jason R Rock
Affiliations
Comment

What silent mutations say about the human airways

Matthew L Donne et al. Elife. .

Abstract

A technique for tracing stem cells and their descendants reveals how the lining of the airways is maintained, and how this process is altered in smokers.

Keywords: Human lineage tracing; airways; lung basal progenitor stem cells; mtDNA mutations; stem cells; stochastic homeostasis.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests:The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. Stem cells known as basal cells maintain the lining of the airways.
Genetic techniques can be used to identify groups of cells that are descended from the same progenitor (clones), represented by different colours in the figure (top). Teixeira et al. reveal that basal cells maintain the airway epithelium through a process called neutral drift. By chance, some clones expand via self-renewal (in which a stem cell divides symmetrically to produce two new stem cells) (bottom left); this is precisely balanced by the loss of other clones through terminal differentiation (in which stem cells commit to becoming other cell types) (bottom right). Each circle represents an individual cell.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment on

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