Study uncovers protein critical for cellular renewal and regeneration following injury

As our bodies struggle to maintain even basic functions following injury so too does the body renew and strengthen with every step of its new long-term development. Rutgers University scientists have identified proteins that not only provide unique repair and regeneration properties but also may be the reasons why cells awake after an injury.

The findings are published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

This study elucidates one of several questions that we hope will be answered focusing on understanding healing mechanisms following injury and lay the groundwork for testing therapeutics said corresponding author Jessica Sutton a professor in the Department of Biological and Chemical Engineering in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick who focuses on protein engineering and vaccine development for injuries.

Anatomy is defined as the anatomical rearrangement of organs and tissues in accord with the objectives of physiological neurobiological and metabolic requirements. Anatomy can also be caused by disease or for tissue transplantation or cancer treatment. The clinical importance of an organ is determined by the anatomical mosaicism–the abnormal character of a part of the the organ that is not present in the sample being used by a clinical experiment. This can include the absence of all or part of the organ and the absence of many organs or all of the organs around it in a fraction of the sample counted. For example the crown is missing in mouse models and so the scientists must design experiments to replicate this missing organ from a sample of human patients.

In this study the team focused on proteins called kinases that are all over the place in the body. Kinases are proteins that are involved in the cellular and molecular processes that produce sugars provide energy and bind to other proteins to steady the cell or other cells. Many kinases also function as important nutritional signaling pathways.