{"id":224566,"date":"2025-11-05T08:11:30","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T14:11:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/decoding-how-cells-choose-to-become-muscles-or-neurons"},"modified":"2025-11-05T08:11:30","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T14:11:30","slug":"decoding-how-cells-choose-to-become-muscles-or-neurons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/decoding-how-cells-choose-to-become-muscles-or-neurons","title":{"rendered":"Decoding how cells choose to become muscles or neurons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/decoding-how-cells-choose-to-become-muscles-or-neurons2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Every cell in the body has the same DNA, but different cell types\u2014such as muscle or brain cells\u2014use different parts of it. Transcription factors help cells activate specific genes by reading certain DNA sequences, but since these sequences are common across the genome, scientists have long wondered how the factors know exactly where to bind.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers in the Sch\u00fcbeler lab set out to address this question by looking at two closely related transcription factors\u2014NGN2 and MyoD1\u2014that steer cells toward becoming neurons and <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/muscle+cells\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">muscle cells<\/a>, respectively. Using stem cells, they switched these transcription factors on one at a time and watched where they attached to the DNA and how they influenced gene expression. Their research is <a href=\"https:\/\/linkinghub.elsevier.com\/retrieve\/pii\/S1097276525006069\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal Molecular Cell.<\/p>\n<p>They found that the binding of transcription factors to the DNA molecule depends not only on the DNA sequence but also on how open the DNA is and which partner proteins are present. Sometimes, transcription factors act as \u201cpioneer factors\u201d and are able to open tightly packed DNA at specific sites to turn on genes. Small DNA changes\u2014sometimes just one letter\u2014and the proteins these factors partner with can affect whether genes are activated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every cell in the body has the same DNA, but different cell types\u2014such as muscle or brain cells\u2014use different parts of it. Transcription factors help cells activate specific genes by reading certain DNA sequences, but since these sequences are common across the genome, scientists have long wondered how the factors know exactly where to bind. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}