Sheri Grill is a postdoc in Whitehead Institute Director Ruth Lehmann’s lab studying germ cells, the cells that become eggs and sperm. We sat down with Sheri to learn more about her and her experiences in and out of the lab.
What are you investigating?
I work on germ cells, which are the cells that eventually become the egg and sperm. I use the fruit fly as my model organism for this, but the mechanisms that I’m looking at have been retained throughout evolution and so are similar from flies to humans. Germ cells are really the only cells that are or have the potential to be truly totipotent, which is when a single cell is capable of becoming any other cell—or every other cell—in our body. Even stem cells are maybe at best multipotent, which means they can turn into some different types of cells in your body, but not every type of cell in your body. However, a germ cell can become an egg, which once fertilized can grow into an entire new body. Every other cell type will die with the body, but the germ cells can be passed down and become the next full being. Getting into the more nitty-gritty stuff, I’m really looking at how these germ cells transcribe the correct genes that give them their identity. What’s the actual genetic regulation of totipotent potential?
