Cell competition and juvenility

Cell competition is the competitive relationship among cells. The loser cells of cell competition are eliminated from tissues thereby the tissue integrity is better maintained. The winner cells grow more. The phenomenon was originally found by Morata et. al with the "Minute" mutant of Drosophila (reference 1).

We utilized neural progenitor cells that form neuroepithelium-like structures and examined the role of cell competition for the maintenance of tissue integrity.

We found the cell competition among the neural progenitor cells provokes the suppression of SRSF7 specifically in the cells that take the loser cell fate. SRSF7 is one of the JAGs that mediates age-dependent alternative splicing (ADAS, reference 2). The suppression of SRSF7 was mediated by degradation via ubiquitin-proteasome machinery and lead to p38-mediated apoptosis and eventual phagocytosis. For more in detail, please check our paper.

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