Stem Cell Funnies

Related Articles Slideshow: Stem Cells for LaughsTilo Kunath?s extra embryonic stem cells elicited a few snickers from the audience. Credit: Courtesy of Tilo Kunath" class="fr-fic fr-dii">Tilo Kunath's extra embryonic stem cells elicited a few snickers from the audience.Tilo KunathOn a flight from Atlanta to Albuquerque in February, Tilo Kunath, a research fellow at the University of Edinburgh, found himself chatting with an older gentleman next to him. That had the potential to be sticky: Kunath works with embryonic and extraembryonic stem cell lines, and his work sometimes requires the destruction of human embryos. His traveling companion wasn?t exactly quiet about his more socially conservative views.At the risk of being reviled for the rest of the flight, Kunath told him all about his work, which he would be presenting at a Keystone meeting on reproduction in Santa Fe. ?We were from totally different worlds,? says Kunath, 35, and about to begin a role at Edinburgh as a group leader. ?We still got along just fine ? We may not have necessarily agreed with each other, but that?s no reason we couldn?t have a nice conversation.?Indeed, the former Air Force pilot, now working in weapons systems, was en route to another meeting in New Mexico. He offered Kunath advice when he found out the young investigator was giving the last talk of the conference. ?He told me, ?Son, you?d better put in some funnies.??So Kunath did. In addition to recounting his run-in with the former pilot, the young investigator included pictures of mating mice and one of himself sitting on the lap of Janet Rossant, his graduate school advisor at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto ? a tradition, apparently (www.sickkids.ca/rossant/movies/LapPhotos.mov). He elicited the kind of chuckles appreciated at the end of a five-day conference.Kunath presented his work on trophoblast stem (TS) cell lines, which are derived not from the inner cell mass of a blastocyst as in traditional embryonic stem cells, but from the trophectoderm, the outer sphere of epithelial cells that generally develops into placental structures and other tissues necessary for fetal development. The generation of the murine TS cell line has improved the ability to study the development of extraembryonic structures.Kunath also spoke of a side project. Conditions used to grow TS cells as well as ES cells sometimes produce strange, rounded cells that shine under phase-contrast microscopy. ?At the time, I didn?t know what they were,? says Kunath. ?The people who wrote the books [on stem cell culture] didn?t know what they were. They just knew they weren?t ES cells, not what you wanted.? So, Kunath looked into characterizing them. Examining cell lines derived in Rossant?s lab and two other labs, Kunath was able to show that they were derived from the primitive endoderm, cells that line part of the inner cell mass and the inside of the trophectoderm (T. Kunath et al., Development, 132:1649?61, 2005).He calls these cells extraembryonic endoderm or XEN cells, and they appeared to take on two morphologies, one of the rounded type and another with a flattened, more epithelial look. By taking videos of the highly motile cells, he found that they were swapping between cell types. Many of the cells were also extending and retracting long pseudopodia, sometimes longer than the diameter of the cell itself. At the Santa Fe meeting, Kunath displayed some scanning electron micrographs of the XEN cells. Rounded and coated with microvili, the cells extend long naked-looking protrusions. A conference-goer snickered softly that they looked awfully phallic. By the third slide, it was apparent that Kunath had stacked the deck to get just such a reaction.Kunath will likely continue his own crosstalk while traveling, unafraid of what people might think of his work ? or what he might think of theirs. He was talking to the gentleman next to him for a while before asking what kinds of weapons he specialized in. ?He just said ?Nuclear!? I became silent, because I was a bit surprised. Although I shouldn?t have been surprised, after all he was going to New Mexico.?

Stem Cell Funnies

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