"Science" p53 protein actually plays a key role in tissue repair

Epithelial tissue is the lining that protects the outer skin and inner cavities of the body, and their ability to repair themselves is important

Injured epithelial cells are known to be able to repair themselves thanks to the collective migration of the remaining cells to seal the cleft

The research was funded by CRUK and the Wellcome Trust and was published in the journal Science [February 11]

Using a simplified model of a wound in which epithelial sheets are scratched to damage the epithelium in vitro, the researchers discovered the molecular signals that enable leader cells to emerge

Cells at the edge of the epithelial gap elevate p53 and p21 after injury, suggesting that the injury triggers the migration program

Eugenia Piddini, Professorial Research Fellow in Cell Biology and Wellcome Trust School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine (CMM) Senior Research Fellow at the University of Bristol, UK, and lead senior author of the work, said: "Our findings improve our ability to An understanding of the mechanisms by which cells repair tissue can be used to develop systems that accelerate wound healing

p53 plays two key roles in epithelial cell repair

Dr Giulia Pilia, a research associate at the University of Bristol's CMM and one of the first authors, added: "Collective migration is important in other areas, such as in cancer, where a group of cells from a primary tumor comes together to form a metastasis

The next step in the research will be to test whether the mechanisms found in the epithelium in vitro also apply in vivo

Kasia Kozyrska, Giulia Pilia, Medhavi Vishwakarma, Laura Wagstaff, Maja Goschorska, Silvia Cirillo, Saad Mohamad, Kelli Gallacher, Rafael E.