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BrdU may also be positive without cell division

Posted by fanjunjunys on 15 Oct 2015 at 02:22 GMT

Dear Authors,
Your paper about Epithelial Migration Drives Kidney Repair is so interesting and give us better understanding of kidney repair mechanisms. However, when talking about the mechanical link between migration and proliferation, your paper show that cell proliferation is a late response that follows cell migration during kidney repair. Because BrdU may also be incorporated into chromatin without cell division, and this may be a sign of cells under stress undergoing DNA repair. So the kidney epithelial cells with BrdU+ in your paper may be not necessarily enter M phase without direct evidence of M-phase specific marker. Do you consider another possibility that the kidney epithelial cells may be not under cell proliferation following cell migration, but under cell hypertrophy and the cell shape become longer to seal the wound? When the BrdU+ cells under S phase with DNA synthesis to induce the cell volume increased, and the cells can change their shape to become longer following the mechanics of cell stretch at the leading edge of wound. So cell migration may be enough to close the wound without cell division.
Best regards,
Junjun Fan

No competing interests declared.