Long-term expandable auricular chondrocytes reveal a conserved nine-gene decline module underlying senescence-independent dedifferentiation
Dilinapa Alemujiang, Naoki Tsuji, Tomoaki Sakamoto, Yu-ying Chu, Kazuto Hoshi, Atsuhiko Hikita · 2026
Read Long-term expandable auricular chondrocytes reveal a conserved nine-gene decline module underlying senescence-independent dedifferentiation by Dilinapa Alemujiang, Naoki Tsuji, Tomoaki Sakamoto, Yu-ying Chu, Kazuto Hoshi, Atsuhiko Hikita (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13280340.txt.
Description
Dilinapa Alemujiang and colleagues report a 2026 study of ear cartilage cells grown long term in the lab. Primary chondrocytes, cartilage making cells, often lose their matrix forming power as they expand in dishes. That loss limits scalable cartilage engineering. Mouse ear chondrocytes were expanded in flat culture to passage forty or fifty, at high and low seed densities. Growth, shape and aging status were tracked over the run.
Both seed densities kept growth steady across extended passages. Cells held stable growth past passage fifty with minimal aging features, and were not immortalized. Cartilage forming power was tested in three dimensional pellet culture with a dye stain. Gene reads of matched flat and pellet samples hunted decline marks. A conserved nine gene decline module, a set of nine genes that fall together, marked late passage loss. The loss ran apart from cell aging, which the authors call dedifferentiation.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Dilinapa Alemujiang, Naoki Tsuji, Tomoaki Sakamoto, Yu-ying Chu, Kazuto Hoshi, Atsuhiko Hikita |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 47447 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |