Cells to Your Liking

Though the piano keyboard consists of only 88 keys, it can produce infinite melodies. Similarly, only five communication pathways, generating any one of a vast array of combinations, determine the future of each embryonic cell (whether it will evolve into a muscle or blood cell, for example). Accidents along these pathways may cause a wide variety of illnesses, including different types of cancer.

Prof. Ben-Zion Shilo of the Weizmann Institute's Molecular Genetics Department has succeeded in identifying such a communication pathway and has also witnessed it in action. "A pathway starts out with a signal received by the cell from the 'outside world,' " says Shilo. "Hormones, for example, bind to the cell's receptors and send a 'communicative message' that passes from molecule to molecule, until the last in the chain penetrates the cell's nucleus and causes the expression of a group of genes."

The pathways themselves have been preserved throughout evolution and are found in almost all multicellular organisms – from worms to human beings. Thus the communication pathway controlling eye development in the fruit fly has a human version as well. 

Understanding the basic mechanisms of embryonic development may one day offer new horizons to those afflicted with a wide range of diseases. Scientists envisage a day when cells taken from the umbilical cord will be induced to become brain cells for implantation in Parkinson's Disease patients or insulin-producing pancreas cells for juvenile diabetes sufferers.

Prof. Shilo’s research is supported by the Wolfson Family Charitable Trust. He is the incumbent of the Hilda and Cecil Lewis Professorial Chair in Molecular Genetics.