Postmortem stem cells

Stem cells know if there is life after death

Kirill Stasevich, Compulenta

It turns out that stem cells live in a dead body for at least seventeen days.

It would seem a strange occupation to look for living cells in a dead body. You do not need to have extensive knowledge of biochemistry and physiology to understand that a cell cannot live without oxygen and nutrients, and who will provide it with both in a deceased organism? But French scientists from the Pasteur Institute, discarding this reasoning, decided to find out if there are living cells in a dead body. However, they were not interested in cells at all, but stem cells.

In an adult, almost every tissue has a small supply of stem cells, which can turn into a set of specialized cells to replace those that have failed. In an article published in the journal Nature Communications (Latil et al., Skeletal muscle stem cells adopt a dormant cell state post mortem and retain regenerative capacity), researchers write about living stem cells found in a 17-day-old human corpse. The body was stored at 4°C, so the decomposition processes were not too intense. Stem cells obtained from a dead man turned out to be not only alive and capable of dividing, they could also successfully turn into skeletal muscle cells.

Note that this group has already received mouse stem cells 14 days after the death of the animal. Those cells also did not lose their functionality: after transplantation to a live rodent, they could heal damaged tissues, turning into the desired type of cells. In a new paper, scientists report that 17 days, apparently, is not the limit: they just limited themselves to this period.

Dormant stem cells in the tissues of a dead body (photo by the authors of the work).

Most likely, the lack of nutrients, oxygen and the appearance of certain special substances in a dead body strongly inhibit the metabolism of cells, plunging them into a kind of hibernation.

The authors of the work do not propose to introduce stem cells "from the other world" into everyday clinical practice. But the study of the mechanisms of such postmortem hibernation would help to learn a lot about them and, consequently, to improve the methods of regenerative medicine.

Prepared according to the materials of the Pasteur Institute:
Dormancy of stem cells enables them to remain viable…many days post mortem.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru13.06.2012