Every cell in the body, whether skin or muscle or brain, starts out as a generic cell that acquires its unique characteristics after undergoing a process of specialization. Nowhere is this process more dramatic than it is in red blood cells.
In order to make as much room as possible for the oxygen-carrying protein hemoglobin, pretty much everything else inside these precursor red blood cells—nucleus, mitochondria, ribosomes and more—gets purged. Jam-packing red blood cells with hemoglobin is essential. Doing so ensures that all the body's tissues and organs are well nourished with oxygen to carry on their normal functions.
But how does this cell remodeling take place to begin with?
For more than 20 years, Daniel Finley, professor of cell biology at Harvard Medical School, has been on a quest to unravel the process behind this profound cellular transformation.
Now, thanks to advances in technology and a fortuitous meeting with researchers in a lab at Boston Children's Hospital, Finley and his collaborators have identified the mechanism behind red blood cell specialization and revealed that it is controlled by an enzyme he first studied in 1995.
Their findings, published Aug. 4 in the journal Science, could spark the development of new treatments for blood disorders and cancers.
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