The discovery of stem cells has kept the medical world on a continuous quest for understanding the mechanisms that ensure the self-renewal of these cells and their capability to treat human disease, which could revolutionize the future of the medicine.

Adult stem cells, also known as somatic stem cells, can be found in the human body and have an active role in replacing the dying cells and regenerating the tissue. Their ability to self-renew and generate cells identical to those of the organ from which they originate raised their therapeutic potential to a new level, and it became the subject of numerous research studies.

Adult stem cells have already been used in leukemia treatment and blood or bone cancers, through bone marrow transplants. Considering the fact that adult stem cells differentiate from the embryonic stem cells, as they don’t require the destruction of an embryo, the U.S. Government has given more research funds to institutes who study this type of cells.

A research team from the Burnham Institute for Medical Research published in Molecular Cell magazine its findings on the mechanism that triggers the transformation of adult muscle stem cells into new tissue. The study shows how two signaling paths co-work in order to assemble components of the protein complexes that are responsible for muscle transcription and how each of the two paths has its active role in the muscle transcription.

Despite the fact that the team of scientists managed to demonstrate the importance of both paths by proving that if the two are separated, the process of muscle transcription will be incomplete, the way the signals lead to altered chromatin structure still remains uncertain.