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Stem cells

Orphan receptors find a home

Nature volume 476, pages 287–288 (2011)Cite this article

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The protein Lgr5 has been valuable as the undisputed marker of intestinal and other stem cells. It emerges that Lgr5 and its relatives also have essential signalling roles of relevance to health and disease. See Article p.293

If you want to find a human stem cell in a tissue, good luck: they are usually rare and are mixed with other specialized cell types. Yet identifying stem cells is an essential step in isolating them for research or therapeutic purposes. This is usually done by searching for markers that occur on or within only a specific stem-cell type. The identification of such markers can also have a secondary payoff, because molecules exclusive to a stem cell probably have some vital function. But, until now, the functions of Lgr5 — a cell-surface protein that marks certain adult stem cells — and other Lgr proteins have remained unclear. Two papers1,2, including one by de Lau et al. on page 293 of this issue, report that the R-spondin growth factors bind to Lgr proteins and mediate activation of the Wnt signalling pathway, which has roles in animal development, as well as in diseases such as cancer3.

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Figure 1: Cooperative signalling within stem cells.

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  1. Walter Birchmeier is at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, 13125 Berlin-Buch, Germany.,

    Walter Birchmeier

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  1. Walter Birchmeier
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Correspondence to Walter Birchmeier.

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Birchmeier, W. Orphan receptors find a home. Nature 476, 287–288 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/476287a

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