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Updated: Mar 25, 2026
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Isolating Nasal Olfactory Stem Cells from Rodents or Humans
Published on: August 22, 2011
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Asymmetric histone inheritance regulates olfactory stem cell fates during regeneration
Binbin Ma1,2, Guanghui Yang1,2, Jonathan Yao2
1Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Biology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Nature Communications
|March 24, 2026
Summary
Adult stem cells in the nose (horizontal basal cells) asymmetrically pass down histones, crucial for regenerating smell tissue and restoring behavior after injury.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Stem Cell Biology
- Epigenetics
Background:
- The olfactory epithelium has horizontal basal cells (HBCs), adult stem cells enabling continuous tissue regeneration.
- Understanding the mechanisms of stem cell division and differentiation is key to tissue repair.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the inheritance patterns of histones during olfactory epithelium regeneration.
- To determine the role of asymmetric histone inheritance in HBC function and tissue repair.
Main Methods:
- Studied histone inheritance (H4, H2A-H2B, H3, H3.3) in mouse olfactory epithelium regeneration and primary HBC cultures.
- Analyzed the correlation between histone inheritance, transcription re-initiation, and p63 enrichment.
- Utilized single-cell RNA sequencing to examine cell fate priming in HBC daughter cells.
Main Results:
- HBCs showed asymmetric inheritance of histone H4, H3, and H3.3, but not H2A-H2B.
- Asymmetric histone inheritance was linked to asynchronous transcription and differential p63 enrichment.
- Disrupting this asymmetry impaired olfactory epithelium regeneration and recovery of smell behavior.
- Single-cell RNA sequencing supported asymmetric multilineage cell fate priming in HBC daughters.
Conclusions:
- Mammalian adult stem cells exhibit asymmetric histone inheritance.
- This epigenetic mechanism is vital for neural tissue regeneration and the restoration of animal behavior.
- Asymmetric histone inheritance influences stem cell fate and tissue repair in the olfactory system.
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