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Not-yet-specialized cells seem to know where to go

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IMAGE
Compartments in adult tissues. Fluorescent protein expression shows posterior compartments in the wing and the abdomen. Please notice that boundaries between compartments are amazingly straight./Tokoku University

What? From a study of fruit flies:

Tohoku University scientists have, for the first time, provided experimental evidence that cell stickiness helps them stay sorted within correct compartments during development. How tightly cells clump together, known as cell adhesion, appears to be enabled by a protein better known for its role in the immune system. The findings were detailed in the journal Nature Communications.

Scientists have long observed that not-yet-specialized cells move in a way that ensures that cell groups destined for a specific tissue stay together. In 1964, American biologist Malcolm Steinberg proposed that cells with similar adhesiveness move to come in contact with each other to minimize energy use, producing a thermodynamically stable structure. This is known as the differential adhesion hypothesis.

“Many other theoretical works have emphasized the importance of differences in cell-to-cell adhesion for separating cell populations and maintaining the boundaries between them, but this had not yet been demonstrated in living animal epithelial tissues,” says Erina Kuranaga of Tohoku University’s Laboratory for Histogenetic Dynamics, who led the investigations. “Our study showed, for the first time, that cell sorting is regulated by changes in adhesion.”

Tohoku University, “Protein tells developing cells to stick together” at Eurekalert Paper (open access)

This all came about by natural selection acting on random mutations? How anyone can take Darwinism seriously, on learning stuff like this, remains a mystery.

Fear of getting Cancelled is a very serious consideration but must one spend one’s life believing something preposterous just to avoid the Cancel mob?

Comments
What!? This is exactly what one might expect from evolution! It’s the only way they could’ve survived as a cohesive organization. And protein glue is obviously a better explanation then The cell psychically knowing where to go or some magical creator........ Evolution scientific GOD of GAPS My work here is doneAaronS1978
December 24, 2020
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