Anti-aging research explores many avenues to find ways to extend the health and lifespans of humans. One of those ways is by exploring long-lived animals and organisms. This study focuses on the incredible sea anemone called Nematostella vectensis (the starlet sea anemone), which is potentially immortal.
Multipotent stem cells
In a paper published in Science Advances, a team led by developmental biologist Ulrich Technau from the University of Vienna describes how molecular genetic methods were used to identify possible candidates for multipotent stem cells within the sea anemone, which could provide insights into human aging.
Multipotent stem cells are regulated by evolutionary highly conserved genes, which in humans are usually only active during the formation of egg and sperm cells, but they give ancient animal phyla such as cnidarians a high degree of regenerative capacity, evidently to even escape aging.
“We live as long as our stem cells” is a somewhat bold but essentially accurate statement. Stem cells contribute to the constant renewal of various cells and tissues If they lose this ability or their numbers decrease in the course of life, the body ages and/or develops diseases. All of these reasons and more are why stem cells are of great interest in biomedical research.
Nematostella vectensis
Most vertebrates and humans can only regenerate parts of certain organs or limbs, but other animal groups have much stronger regenerative mechanisms which is made possible by pluripotent or multipotent stem cells, which can form (differentiate) almost all cell types of the body.
This brings us to the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis which is highly regenerative: being able to reproduce asexually by budding and amazingly shows no signs of aging, all of which makes it an interesting subject for stem cell research. However, researchers have been struggling to identify any stem cells in these animals, that is until now. Using a new “Single Cell Genomics” method, the researchers were able to identify cells of a complex organism based on their specific transcriptome profiles and determine from which stem cells they have developed.
Discovering potential immortality
“By combining single-cell gene expression analyses and transgenesis, we have now been able to identify a large population of cells in the sea anemone that form differentiated cells such as nerve cells and glandular cells and are therefore candidates for multipotent stem cells,” explains first author Andreas Denner from the University of Vienna. It was noted that they have remained undiscovered until now due to their tiny size.
These newly discovered potential stem cells express the evolutionarily highly conserved genes nanos and piwi, which enable the development of germ cells (sperm and egg cells) in all animals, which includes humans. By specifically mutating the nanos2 gene using the CRISPR gene editing scissors, the researchers were able to prove that the gene is necessary for the formation of germ cells in sea anemones. It has also been shown in previous research in other animals that this gene is essential for the production of gametes.
This work proves that this gene function emerged around 600 million years ago, and excitingly it has been preserved to this day. In future studies, the team now wants to investigate which special properties of the sea anemone’s stem cells are responsible for its potential immortality.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.ado0424
