Josephina Van Wolfswinkel
Yale University, CT·Biology
Pluripotent stem cells can become any cell type. To be useful and safe, they must stay stable over long periods and switch cleanly into specialized cells when needed.
- Fields
Biology
Genetics
Biochemistry
- Topics
planarian
Schmidtea mediterranea
neoblasts
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Apr 2030
What they work on
- Determine how source transcripts for piRNAs, small RNAs that silence jumping genes, are generated and recognized in planarian neoblast stem cells, and how the response is kept away from important genes.
- Analyze whether and how the piRNA pathway interacts with other non-coding RNA regulatory pathways that function in Schmidtea mediterranea stem cells.
- Identify the proteins that deposit histone modifications at piRNA target sites, determine how these changes disrupt chromatin rearrangement during differentiation, and test a direct link to DNA damage repair.
- Test whether altering transposon levels or chromatin regulation changes the rate of aging in planarian differentiated tissues, using newly identified age-related markers.
- Determine which transposon-related pathways sustain indefinite planarian stem cell maintenance, whether tissue lifespan correlates with transposon control, and where age-related chromatin changes occur in the genome.
More about the research
Adult stem cells also decline with age, which contributes to age-related disease. These projects use the planarian flatworm Schmidtea mediterranea, which regenerates readily and appears not to age (negligible senescence). Its adult pluripotent stem cells, called neoblasts, last indefinitely. Both projects focus on how small RNAs and chromatin, the packaging of DNA, protect the genome from transposons. Transposons are "jumping genes" that copy themselves around the genome.
Why it matters
Stem cell therapies need pluripotent cells that stay genetically stable, and aging stem cells lose their ability to repair tissue. Learning how planarians use piRNAs and chromatin control to keep stem cells stable could inform safer therapeutic use of stem cells. It could also suggest strategies to extend human healthspan, with possible relevance to fertility, birth defects, aging and cancer.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Phillip Zamore
University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, MA·Biochemistry
Identify the regulatory targets and gene-control mechanisms of pachytene piRNAs, small RNAs abundant in mouse sperm-precursor cells, using biochemistry and mouse genetics.
Blair Benham-Pyle
Baylor College of Medicine, TX·Biology·Early-career
Determine how age-associated damage builds up and shows itself across the life cycle of asexual Schmidtea mediterranea flatworms, using standard assays for conserved hallmarks of aging.
Christian Sell
Drexel University, PA·Biology
Test whether rapamycin, a drug that blocks the mTOR growth pathway, prevents cellular senescence (permanent cell-cycle arrest) by raising levels of the long non-coding RNA H19.
The school
Yale University: 73 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 438 research doctorates a year.
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