The paper
M. Portela et al., “Drosophila SPARC is a self-protective signal expressed by loser cells during cell competition,” Dev Cell, 19:562-73, 2010. Free F1000 Evaluation
The finding
During development and aging, animal cells that have been weakened by mutation, infection, and oxidative damage can be forced to commit suicide by signals from healthy cells—a process called competition. But if a cell has suffered only a temporary setback, say a transient transcription error, it can buy time by expressing a survival factor, a protein called SPARC.
The mediator
Eduardo Moreno’s group at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre in Madrid was looking at cellular competition during Drosophila development when they noticed that SPARC prevented apoptosis in loser cells by inhibiting caspase activation. Moreno quips that SPARC is “a mechanism to solve problems in cellular society”—a sort of community mediator.
The role
”We really still don’t understand: is there one central ...
