Overview

• Researchers at IRB Barcelona led by Dr. Marco Milán created a system that induces targeted monosomies and trisomies in living Drosophila tissue while marking affected cells in real time.
• Cells missing critical genomic regions grow more slowly and are selectively removed through cell competition by fitter neighboring cells.
• Simultaneous generation of monosomic and trisomic cells revealed that trisomic neighbors accelerate the apoptotic clearance of weaker monosomic cells.
• Insights into how tissues purge aneuploid cells could refine embryo selection in IVF and inform treatments that target chromosomally unstable cancer cells.
• Following publication in Cell Genomics, the team will map all haploinsufficient regions of the Drosophila genome to identify genes that trigger competition signals.