Stem Cell Research & Therapy

tracked for impact factor

Commentary

Controlling the direction of division

Peter Satir

Author Affiliations

Department of Anatomy and Structural Biology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, 1300 Morris Park Ave., Bronx, 10461 New York, USA

Stem Cell Research & Therapy 2010, 1:21 doi:10.1186/scrt21

Published: 23 July 2010

Abstract

Quyn and colleagues report that gut stem cells have a biased spindle orientation and asymmetric retention of label-retaining DNA. These features are lost in mouse and human tissues when the microtubule binding protein Apc is mutated. In the developing kidney, Apc acts downstream from primary cilium signaling to influence spindle orientation when noncanonical Wnt signaling predominates. Do gut stem cells also have primary cilia?