Publications by authors named "Stefan van der Elst"

Developmental gene expression is often controlled by distal regulatory DNA elements called enhancers. Distant enhancer action is restricted to structural chromosomal domains that are flanked by CTCF-associated boundaries and formed through cohesin chromatin loop extrusion. To better understand how enhancers, genes and CTCF boundaries together form structural domains and control expression, we used a bottom-up approach, building series of active regulatory landscapes in inactive chromatin.

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Colorectal cancer stem cells (CSCs) express Lgr5 and display extensive stem cell-like multipotency and self-renewal and are thought to seed metastatic disease. Here, we used a mouse model of colorectal cancer (CRC) and human tumor xenografts to investigate the cell of origin of metastases. We found that most disseminated CRC cells in circulation were Lgr5 and formed distant metastases in which Lgr5 CSCs appeared.

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Various species of the intestinal microbiota have been associated with the development of colorectal cancer, but it has not been demonstrated that bacteria have a direct role in the occurrence of oncogenic mutations. Escherichia coli can carry the pathogenicity island pks, which encodes a set of enzymes that synthesize colibactin. This compound is believed to alkylate DNA on adenine residues and induces double-strand breaks in cultured cells.

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Article Synopsis
  • Researchers studied heart stem cells to see if they help heal heart tissue after damage.
  • They found that heart muscle cells only grow a lot when a baby is growing, and other types of heart cells help repair damage instead.
  • They didn’t find any resting stem cells or proof that other cell types can turn into heart muscle cells after an injury.
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Background: Genome-wide transcriptome analysis has greatly advanced our understanding of the regulatory networks underlying basic cardiac biology and mechanisms driving disease. However, so far, the resolution of studying gene expression patterns in the adult heart has been limited to the level of extracts from whole tissues. The use of tissue homogenates inherently causes the loss of any information on cellular origin or cell type-specific changes in gene expression.

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The regeneration-capable flatworm is a powerful model organism to study the biology of stem cells in vivo. As a flatworm amenable to transgenesis, it complements the historically used planarian flatworm models, such as . However, information on the transcriptome and markers of stem cells in is limited.

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Cycling Lgr5+ stem cells fuel the rapid turnover of the adult intestinal epithelium. The existence of quiescent Lgr5+ cells has been reported, while an alternative quiescent stem cell population is believed to reside at crypt position +4. Here, we generated a novel Ki67RFP knock-in allele that identifies dividing cells.

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Objective: Loci on mouse chromosome 2 have previously been associated with ethanol consumption. Here, we used a limited access choice paradigm in which mice consume large quantities of ethanol (2-3 g/kg/2 h) with a high preference (>80%). In addition, mouse chromosome substitution strains were used to further evaluate the contribution of chromosome 2 to ethanol consumption.

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