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Aron Moscona, 87, Biologist Who Explored EmFrom: Dean Huffman (dean@thehuffpeople.net)Mon Jan 26 02:34:39 2009
.. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/nyregion/26moscona.html?ref=obituaries Aron Moscona, 87, Biologist Who Explored Embryonic Cells, Dies By DONALD G. MCNEIL JR Aron Arthur Moscona, a biologist who provided early insights into how cells in the developing embryo find one another and interact, died on Jan. 14 in Manhattan. He was 87. The cause was heart failure, his daughter, Dr. Anne Moscona, said. Dr. Moscona's experiments in the late 1950s to the early 1970s looked at how individual embryonic cells collect themselves into tissues and organs. He broke embryonic tissues apart with enzymes, let them grow back together and found that they recreated the original structures. His work led to the discovery of cadherins, the molecules on cell surfaces that recognize one another. It allowed other scientists, some of them his students, to explore the processes by which blood cells leave the bone marrow to circulate, sperm and eggs free themselves and skin cells cross gaps to close a wound. In the absence of molecular surface bonds, he wrote in a 1961 Scientific American article, "the human body would collapse into a heap of disconnected, individual cells, many of them quite indistinguishable from certain free-living protozoa." Striking photographs of his work accompanied the article: individual cells swirled into clouds in glass flasks slowly settle and creep along the bottom for hours until they reform themselves - yellow sponges separating themselves from orange sponges, chick kidney cells clumping separately from chick cartilage cells, retinal cells forming spirals resembling their embryonic arrangement. The photographs also showed that cells only a week old made bigger clumps than those two weeks old. After three weeks, the settled mass resembled a greensward covered by a scattered, indifferent crowd, proving that cells' power to recognize one another faded as the embryo matured. "Cells dissociated from adult animals usually do not recohere at all," he wrote. He also found that similar cells from different species had overlapping recognition signals. When mixed, kidney cells from mice and chick embryos would form "chimeric fabrics," and curl into tubules incorporating tissue from both species. Dr. Moscona was also known for inventing solutions in which cells would grow, like serum from clotting blood diluted with saline, and for showing that temperature and swirling speed affected results. Other scientists adapted his media and techniques for their own work. He and his wife, Malka, were on the faculty of the University of Chicago for decades and taught many other developmental biologists. Besides his wife and daughter, he is survived by two grandchildren. Dr. Moscona grew up in Haifa, Israel, and received his doctorate from Hebrew University. He also worked at Strangeways Research Laboratory in Cambridge, England, and at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
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