Nomadic outposts of transplanted stem cells tracked in Stan...( at location contained existing stem cel...)

at location contained existing stem cells, the transplanted stem cell would detect signals indicating, "this compartment is full, we don't want you here," he added. An empty compartment probably lacks these unwelcoming signals. "The cell knows there's an empty seat to jump into, and now we can watch them play musical chairs - we just don't hear the music yet."

What surprised the researchers is how much the pattern varied. In many cases one location would initially house a healthy population of glowing stem cells, only to have that population fade over time while daughter cells set up camp at a distant location. In other mice, locations that initially contained a languishing population of cells would suddenly flourish. When the researchers took stem cells from sites within one transplanted animal and put them into a second mouse lacking bone marrow, those stem cells once again seemed to take a random path to new niches and started the game of musical chairs over again. "This shows that the niche preferences aren't programmed into the cells," Contag said.

Other Stanford researchers who contributed the work include postdoctoral scholars Amy Wagers, PhD, and Andreas Beilhack, PhD; technician Joan Dusich; research associate Michael Bachmann, MD, DSc; Robert Negrin, MD, associate professor of medicine; and Irving Weissman, MD, the Karel and Avice Beekhuis Professor of Cancer Biology and director of Stanford's Institute for Cancer/Stem Cell Biology and Medicine.

Contag is one of the founders of Xenogen, which makes the sensitive video camera used in this study.

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Contact: Mitzi Baker
650-725-2106
Stanford University Medical Center
15-Dec-2003

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