Fact: Every so often, I wonder what my professors in my general studies courses think when they read essays I write for their classes. Possibly too often, if I'm given free reign to write on a topic, it somehow takes a turn towards biology. Last year, I know I amused my history class reader by writing an essay on the effects of the black plague that quite thoroughly described transmission of the disease and its effects on the body. Well, this quarter, I found out some interesting facts about leprosy for my religion class.
Fact: The same bacteria that causes the disease of Biblical fame is now being examined for its possibilities in stem cell research. Just a couple months ago, a paper was published stating that Mycobacterium leprae appeared to be able to turn nerve cells back into a stem-cell-like state. Why is this important? Well, think about human development. You start as a single cell that starts dividing and dividing and dividing until you've grown into a little human with arms, eyes, a liver, and fingernails. All those parts are made out of cells. In an adult, an eye cell is only ever going to divide into another eye cell and so on. In an embryo, however, the stem cells it is made up of become all these different types of cells. So stem cells are getting lots of attention to see what use can be made of them in medicine. One of the key questions is what ways there might be to make an adult's own cells return to that state of potency (being able to make many types of cells) and it appears that this bacteria can do just that. It basically hijacks the nerve cells, turns them into this stem-cell-like state, and then spreads. When the infected cells reach a different type of tissue, they're able to just keep on growing into that new tissue, spreading the bacteria even further. So there you have it! The leprosy bacteria might hold a key to changing adult cells into stem cells for treatments using regenerative tissue therapy for diseases like Alzheimer's and diabetes!
Source: http://www.nature.com/news/leprosy-bug-turns-adult-cells-into-stem-cells-1.12239
