Drosophila study identifies MMP1 as a driver of cell-fate switching and tissue regeneration after ionising radiation

A study published in PLOS Genetics on 30 July 2026, by Michael Shiferaw, Lauren Orr, Korneel Hens, and Tin Tin Su, examines how surviving cells re-establish damaged tissue architecture following ionising radiation (IR) in the Drosophila larval wing disc — a well-established model system for studying radiation-induced tissue repair.

Previous work by the same group had established that hinge cells of the wing disc can convert to pouch identity and physically move into the pouch region to assist in regenerating tissue that sustains greater IR-induced apoptosis. The present study identifies Matrix Metalloprotease 1 (Mmp1) as a key promoter of this process. The authors demonstrate that Mmp1 facilitates both the cell-fate change itself — an epithelial-to-epithelial transition rather than the more commonly studied epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition — and the subsequent cell translocation needed to populate the damaged tissue compartment.

The relevance for cancer biology lies in the parallel with therapeutic failure: when cancer cells surviving radiotherapy acquire stem-cell-like properties and repopulate a tumour, the cellular mechanics underlying their movement are poorly understood. This study contributes to characterising those mechanics in a genetically tractable system. While the work is conducted in Drosophila and does not directly address mammalian radiobiology, Mmps are conserved across species and the findings may inform hypotheses about how residual tumour cells navigate tissue after treatment.

The paper is peer-reviewed and published in an open-access journal.