Tapping into regeneration: New paths to repairing brain injury discovered in fruit flies
Originally published by Dionne Seah, Duke-NUS Medical School, on August 8, 2023 An image of neural stem cells (NSCs) from Drosophila (fruit fly) larval brains six hours after larval hatching. NSCs are labeled by a membrane marker (green) and a nuclear marker (magenta). Scale bar: 10µm. Credit: Mahekta Rajeshkumar Gujar Researchers at Duke-NUS Medical School have discovered the regenerative capabilities of injured cellular protrusions from dormant neural stem cells ( NSCs ) in fruit flies . Published in Developmental Cell , the findings establish fruit fly NSCs as a powerful new model to unlock the secrets of neuronal regeneration that could one day lead to new therapies for repairing damage in aging human brains . The study is the first to demonstrate that severed protrusions from fruit fly NSCs can regenerate . However, this capacity declines with age, mirroring the limited ability of mammalian neurons to regrow damaged connections as they grow older. The r...