Small extracellular vesicles (SEVs) offer a promising strategy for tissue regeneration, yet their short lifetime at the injured tissue limits their efficacy. Here, we show that kinetics of SEV delivery impacts tissue regeneration at tissue, cellular, and molecular levels. We show that multiple carefully timed applications of SEVs had superior regeneration than a single dose of the same total concentration of SEVs. Importantly, diabetic and nondiabetic wounds treated with a single time point dose of an injectable light-triggerable hydrogel containing SEVs demonstrated a robust increase in closure kinetics relative to wounds treated with a single or multiple doses of SEVs or platelet-derived growth factor BB, an FDA-approved wound regenerative therapy. The pro-healing activity of released SEVs was mediated at the tissue/cell level by an increase in skin neovascularization and re-epithelization and at the molecular level by an alteration in the expression of 7 miRNAs at different times during wound healing. This includes an alteration of has-miR-150-5p, identified here to be important for skin regeneration.
The formation of a complex multicellular organism requires the precise specification of many diverse cell types at the correct time and position throughout development. This may be achieved by coordinating cell fate specification processes with progression through the cell cycle. Here, we show that the extra distal tip cells (DTCs) associated with the loss of cki-1, a Caenorhabditis elegans homologue of the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p27, do not arise from duplications of pre-existing DTCs, but that they are formed from another cell type within the somatic gonad. Results from our laser microsurgery experiments suggest that the extra DTCs are caused by aberrant somatic gonadal precursor cell divisions in the absence of cki-1, resulting in abnormal daughter cell fates. cki-1(RNAi) animals also possess extra anchor cells and ectopic gonad arms with variable sheath cell numbers and positioning. In addition, cki-1(RNAi) animals display an endomitotic oocyte (Emo) phenotype. Our results uncover a novel role of this CKI in cell fate acquisition, either by directly influencing specification, or through a more conventional role in appropriately linking cell cycle phase with this process.
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