By Elizabeth Pennisi – Science
When Vicki Losick got her Ph.D. and joined a fruit fly lab at the Carnegie Institution for Science in 2008, its head announced that he expected his postdocs to launch new fields of inquiry. She chose a then-fashionable focus: stem cells, versatile cells that specialize into other cell types and play critical roles in embryonic development and the renewal of adult tissues. Losick wondered whether they also help in wound repair. So, she and another postdoc, Don Fox, began stabbing fruit flies with a tiny needle, hoping to document stem cells coming to the rescue.