{"id":115992,"date":"2026-09-18T19:04:17","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T23:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/?p=115992"},"modified":"2026-09-18T19:04:26","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T23:04:26","slug":"death-resistant-cells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/bible-resources\/bible-and-science\/death-resistant-cells\/","title":{"rendered":"Death-Resistant Cells: The Ones That Almost Died Rebuilt the Tissue"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='booster-block booster-read-block'>\n                <div class=\"twp-read-time\">\n                \t<i class=\"booster-icon twp-clock\"><\/i> <span>Read Time:<\/span>10 Minute, 17 Second                <\/div>\n\n            <\/div><p>In the 1970s, scientists did something that sounds cruel and turned out to be a gift. They hit fruit fly larvae with a heavy dose of radiation. A big share of the cells in the tissue that grows into the wing died.<\/p>\n\n<p>Then the flies grew normal, working wings anyway.<\/p>\n\n<p>Something had rebuilt the lost tissue. For about fifty years, nobody could say exactly what. You would probably guess the healthy cells did it, the ones the radiation missed. That is the obvious answer.<\/p>\n\n<p>It is the wrong one. The cells that did most of the rebuilding were death-resistant cells that had already started to die, and then did not finish.<\/p>\n\n<h2>What Scientists Found About Death-Resistant Cells<\/h2>\n\n<p>The study came from a team at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, led by Dr. Tslil Braun in the lab of Prof. Eli Arama. It was published in the journal <em>Nature Communications<\/em> in December 2025, with researchers from UMass Chan Medical School and a research centre in Spain. (You may be seeing it in the news again now. The paper itself is from late 2025.)<\/p>\n\n<p>Here is the short version. Every cell carries its own self-destruct program. Biologists call it apoptosis. It is how the body clears out cells that are damaged or no longer needed. The program runs in steps. First a &#8220;starter&#8221; enzyme switches on. Then it switches on the &#8220;executioner&#8221; enzymes, which take the cell apart.<\/p>\n\n<p>The team built a way to spot cells where that starter enzyme had switched on at some point, even if the cell was still alive later. Braun put the goal simply: &#8220;We set out to identify cells that push the self-destruct button but survive anyway.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<p>They found them. And those were the cells that rebuilt the wing.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"convertkit-form wp-block-convertkit-form\" style=\"\"><script async data-uid=\"6491fb8269\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.kit.com\/6491fb8269\/index.js\" data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" data-no-defer=\"1\" data-no-optimize=\"1\" nowprocket><\/script><\/div>\n\n\n<h2>The Cells That Pressed the Button and Didn&#8217;t Finish<\/h2>\n\n<p>The researchers named them DARE cells. In these cells, the starter enzyme turned on, but the chain stopped there. The executioners never fired.<\/p>\n\n<p>What stopped it? A tiny motor protein called Myo1D. Motor proteins normally move cargo around inside a cell. Here, it seems to hold the starter enzyme against the cell&#8217;s outer wall, where it cannot pass the kill order along. The cell is caught halfway into dying and stays there.<\/p>\n\n<p>Then those half-finished cells got to work. Here is the timeline from the study:<\/p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>About 4 hours<\/strong> after the radiation, a small group of these cells showed up.<\/li>\n<li><strong>By 24 hours<\/strong>, their numbers peaked.<\/li>\n<li><strong>By 48 hours<\/strong>, their offspring had filled in nearly half of the damaged tissue.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p>When the team took the DARE cells out of the picture, the regrowth disappeared. When they silenced the Myo1D motor, the DARE cells died, and the tissue healed badly. The stalled cells were not a side detail. They were the repair crew.<\/p>\n\n<h2>The Part Nobody Expected: The Dying Cells Called Them<\/h2>\n\n<p>This is the detail that is easy to read past. Buried in the paper&#8217;s summary is one short line: dying cells trigger DARE induction.<\/p>\n\n<p>In plain words, the cells that really did die were not useless. Their dying is what switched on the rescuers. The loss itself sent the signal that started the rebuilding.<\/p>\n\n<p>And there was a second group, too. The team called them NARE cells. They also resisted death, but their starter enzyme never switched on at all. They helped with the regrowth, but they could not do it alone.<\/p>\n\n<p>The two groups kept each other in check. DARE cells sent out growth signals that helped NARE cells multiply. NARE cells, in turn, slowed the DARE cells down. That back-and-forth kept the tissue from growing too much. The paper says keeping that balance was crucial for the wing to grow and form properly.<\/p>\n\n<p>So the repair was not one hero cell. It was a small team: the ones that fell, the ones that nearly fell and got back up, and the steady ones who kept the whole thing from running wild.<\/p>\n\n<h2>Tougher Afterward, and Why That Has a Dark Side<\/h2>\n\n<p>When the researchers hit the healed tissue with a second dose of radiation, far fewer cells died in the first hours than the first time around. The offspring of DARE cells were about seven times more resistant to cell death than the cells in the original tissue. Surviving had been passed down.<\/p>\n\n<p>That sounds like pure good news. It is not, and the researchers said so themselves.<\/p>\n\n<p>Cancer cells also need to dodge their own self-destruct program. Arama said &#8220;this might be one of the mechanisms that enables cancer cells to evade apoptosis.&#8221; It could help explain why some tumours come back after radiation treatment tougher and harder to treat than before. Being hard to kill is a gift in a wing. It is a danger in a tumour.<\/p>\n\n<p>That is worth sitting with. We tend to cheer for toughness without asking what it is for. There is a well-known saying that <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/quotes\/what-doesnt-kill-you-makes-you-stronger\/\">what doesn&#8217;t kill you makes you stronger<\/a>, and it has a complicated history of its own. Strength that only protects itself can turn into the problem. In this tissue, the survivors were useful because they spent their survival rebuilding what was lost, and because other cells kept them from overgrowing.<\/p>\n\n<h2>What This Does and Doesn&#8217;t Mean for People<\/h2>\n\n<p>A few honest limits:<\/p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>This was in fruit flies.<\/strong> Specifically, in the tissue that becomes the wing. Not in humans.<\/li>\n<li><strong>The starter enzyme has a human cousin.<\/strong> The fly enzyme, called Dronc, is the fly version of a human enzyme called caspase-9. That is why scientists think this may matter for people, especially for cancer. But nobody has shown yet that human tissue repairs itself this way.<\/li>\n<li><strong>These cells were not brought back from the dead.<\/strong> Some headlines lean on words like &#8220;resurrected.&#8221; That is not quite right. The cells never finished dying. The dying process was stopped partway. That is a different thing, and the difference is the whole point.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p>It also fits a bigger pattern in how bodies handle damage. Another recent study found that some of the longest-lived bats do nearly the opposite: they <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/bgodinspired-news\/bgodinspired-science-news\/bat-lifespan-damaged-cells\/\">let badly damaged cells go<\/a> instead of patching them. Life seems to need both: knowing when to let go, and knowing when a cell that nearly went under is exactly the one to rebuild with.<\/p>\n\n<h2>The Rebuilders Were Never the Untouched Ones<\/h2>\n\n<p>Go back to that obvious guess. We assume the healthy cells, the ones the radiation missed, would do the rebuilding. That is how we tend to think about people, too. When something falls apart, we look for the ones who were never touched by it. The strong ones. The ones who have it together.<\/p>\n\n<p>But in this wing, the ones who were never touched were not the main builders. The ones that did most of the work had felt the full weight of the damage and started to go under themselves. Something held them at the edge. And from that edge, they rebuilt nearly half of what was lost.<\/p>\n\n<p>It is one of the oldest ideas people of faith have held onto: that nothing that nearly broke you is wasted, and that God has a way of turning the ones who were almost lost into the ones who help carry everyone else. Science did not set out to say anything like that. It is just strange how closely a fly&#8217;s wing seems to agree.<\/p>\n\n<h2>If You Are One of the Ones Who Nearly Went Under<\/h2>\n\n<p>Maybe you have been through something that should have finished you. An illness. A loss. A season you barely remember because it took everything just to get through the days. Maybe you still feel half-stalled, like the damage started and never quite resolved.<\/p>\n\n<p>You might think that makes you the one who needs rebuilding. Some days it does. But the people who can sit with someone in a hospital hallway, or at a graveside, or at 3am when nothing makes sense, are very often the people who have been there themselves. Not the untouched. The nearly-lost.<\/p>\n\n<p>Just remember the other half of what the flies showed. The survivors did not rebuild alone, and they did not rebuild without limits. They needed the steady ones around them, and they needed someone to slow them down. Healing others does not mean ignoring your own limits.<\/p>\n\n<p>The psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who survived the Nazi camps, is often quoted as proof that suffering makes you stronger. <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/entertainment\/mans-search-for-meaning-explained\/\">What he actually argued<\/a> was different: the suffering itself is not the point, and what matters is how a person meets it. Those stalled cells in a fly&#8217;s wing met theirs by rebuilding.<\/p>\n\n<h2>Discussion Question<\/h2>\n\n<p>The study found that the cells that nearly died did more of the rebuilding than the cells that were never hit. Do you think the same is true of people? When a family, a friend group, or a community goes through something hard, is it usually the untouched ones or the ones who nearly went under who end up holding everyone together? Tell us what you have seen in the comments.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"convertkit-form wp-block-convertkit-form\" style=\"\"><script async data-uid=\"6491fb8269\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.kit.com\/6491fb8269\/index.js\" data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" data-no-defer=\"1\" data-no-optimize=\"1\" nowprocket><\/script><\/div>\n\n\n<h2>Share This<\/h2>\n\n<p><strong>1.<\/strong> Scientists found that after radiation wiped out tissue, the cells that rebuilt it weren&#8217;t the untouched ones. They were cells that had started to die and stopped halfway. That&#8217;s going to stay with me. https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/bible-resources\/bible-and-science\/death-resistant-cells\/<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>2.<\/strong> A 50-year-old mystery in biology: who rebuilds tissue after heavy damage? Answer: the cells that almost died. Nearly half the tissue, in two days. And the dying cells are what called them in. https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/bible-resources\/bible-and-science\/death-resistant-cells\/<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>3.<\/strong> The people who get you through the worst are usually people who have been through it themselves. Turns out even cells work that way. Worth a read: https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/bible-resources\/bible-and-science\/death-resistant-cells\/<\/p>\n\n<h2>Questions People Ask About Death-Resistant Cells<\/h2>\n\n<h3>What are death-resistant cells?<\/h3>\n<p>Death-resistant cells are cells that survive even after their self-destruct program, called apoptosis, has been triggered or would normally be triggered. In a 2025 study in <em>Nature Communications<\/em>, scientists at Israel&#8217;s Weizmann Institute of Science found two kinds in fruit fly wing tissue after radiation: DARE cells, where the first enzyme of the self-destruct program switched on but the process stalled, and NARE cells, which resisted death without that enzyme switching on at all.<\/p>\n\n<h3>How do damaged tissues regenerate after radiation?<\/h3>\n<p>In fruit fly wing tissue, regrowth after radiation, known as compensatory proliferation, is driven largely by cells that began to self-destruct and stopped partway. A 2025 Weizmann Institute study found these cells, called DARE cells, and their offspring refilled nearly half of the damaged tissue within 48 hours. Dying neighbour cells helped trigger them, and a second group of death-resistant cells helped regulate how much they grew.<\/p>\n\n<h3>What stops a cell from finishing apoptosis?<\/h3>\n<p>In the fruit fly cells studied by researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science, a motor protein called Myo1D kept the starter enzyme of apoptosis, called Dronc, from switching on the executioner enzymes that dismantle the cell. When the researchers silenced Myo1D, the stalled cells died and tissue repair suffered.<\/p>\n\n<h3>Is this the same as cells coming back from the dead?<\/h3>\n<p>No. The fruit fly cells described in the 2025 Weizmann Institute study never finished dying, so they were not revived. Their self-destruct process began and then stalled before the stage that dismantles the cell. Describing them as &#8220;resurrected&#8221; overstates what the researchers found.<\/p>\n\n<h3>Does this discovery apply to humans and cancer?<\/h3>\n<p>Not directly yet. The research was done in fruit flies. The key fly enzyme, Dronc, is the fly version of human caspase-9, which is why scientists think the finding could matter for people. The offspring of the stalled cells were about seven times more resistant to cell death, and senior researcher Prof. Eli Arama said a similar mechanism might help cancer cells evade apoptosis and return tougher after radiation therapy.<\/p>\n\n<p><em>Source: Braun, T. et al., &#8220;Apoptosis-resistant cells drive compensatory proliferation via cell-autonomous and non-autonomous functions of the initiator caspase Dronc,&#8221; <\/em>Nature Communications<em> (2025), via the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedaily.com\/releases\/2026\/09\/260917003722.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Weizmann Institute release on ScienceDaily<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>        <div class=\"booster-block booster-reactions-block\">\n            <div class=\"twp-reactions-icons\">\n                \n                <div class=\"twp-reacts-wrap\">\n                    <a react-data=\"be-react-1\" post-id=\"115992\" class=\"be-face-icons un-reacted\" href=\"javascript:void(0)\">\n                        <img 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The surprise: they had already started to die. What it means, and what it doesn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":115991,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_wp_convertkit_post_meta":{"form":"-1","landing_page":"0","tag":"0","restrict_content":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226,3550],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bgodinspired-science-news","category-bible-and-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115992"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115995,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115992\/revisions\/115995"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}