MDA-supported scientists in Ottawa have found that controlled
damage to DNA is required before immature muscle cells can
mature into muscle fibers. Remodeling a building usually
requires some degree of dismantling before new construction can
begin. That principle, it now seems, also may apply to the
remodeling of the body's cells. Scientists at Ottawa Hospital
Research Institute and the University of Ottawa have found
recently that it applies to muscle cells, which can only develop
from a stemlike state into mature muscle fibers after a certain
amount of their DNA has been disassembled and then rebuilt.
About the new findings MDA grantee Lynn Megeney, a senior
scientist at Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and an associate
professor in the Departments of Medicine and Cellular and
Molecular Biology at the University of Ottawa, led the
investigative team, which conducted experiments on mouse muscle
cells and published its findings online Feb. 16, 2010, in
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. In