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What would fly researchers discover at the tips of the reproductive structures? In the immediate environment in which the GSC (germline stem cells) sit? Shangri-La.
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The experimental biologist J.J. Trentin proposed in 1970 that within the bone marrow and other home locations, there exists 'hematopoietic inductice microenvironment' with the unique ability to serve as a home location for blood stem cells. In the later 1970s, another blood cell expert, R. Schofield, referred to this specialized microenvironment as a 'niche', introducing the term that would stick and eventually, become widely applied to describe the microenvironment surrounding any type of stem cell. Fly biologist H. Lin describes a stem cell niche as 'the Shangri-La, the idyllic hideaway' in which these cells reside. Nestled in the niche, Lin states, stem cells 'thrive to self-renew and to produce numerous daughter cells that will differentiate and age as they leave the paradise'. In other words, the niche is the place that a stem cell is granted its two wishes - allowing it both to remain and to become something else.
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Stephanie Elizabeth Mohr (First in Fly: Drosophila Research and Biological Discovery)