Stem Cell Advancements

[Mr. Blonde]

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science...om_skin_cells/

Bioscientists announced Wednesday that they have turned the skin cells of mice into brain cells in less than a week.

"We actively and directly induced one cell type to become a completely different cell type," said Marius Wernig, an assistant professor of pathology at the Stanford University School of Medicine in California.

"These are fully functional neurons. They can do all the principal things that neurons in the brain do," Wernig told the AFP news agency

The exploit "is a huge leap forward," added Irving Weissman of the university's Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine.

There has been lots of funding pushed into stem-cell research, driven by hopes that immature cells can be prompted into becoming specific adult cells for the heart, brain and so on.

According to AFP, one day cells could be coaxed into becoming replacement material for tissue damaged by an accident, or by diseases like Parkinson's or Alzheimer's.

It was thought that only pluripotent stem cells could give rise to all types of cells in the body, until now.

Embryonic stem cells have triggered controversy, with objections from the Roman Catholic Church, which says that an embryo is a human life.

In 2007, "induced" pluripotent stem cells were created to help ease moral objections.

These are adult skin cells that are reprogrammed with a basket of genes and bath of proteins back to their pluripotent state, and then prompted into developing into a new cell type.

This new research skips this intermediary stage by converting mature cells, taken from the skin of mice tails, into neurons in a lab dish all in a single step.

Thomas Vierbuchen, who led the study, used three genes involved in reprogramming and neutral function.

It took less than a week for the transformation, after which the cells were injected into living mice. The former skin cells looked like brain cells and expressed neural proteins.

According to the paper, another plus was the success rate in transforming the skin cells into neurons.

The study, which was published online by the British Journal Nature, said that at 20 percent, it was up to 10 times more efficient than conventional pluripotent stem cell techniques.

The next step of the research will be to duplicate the same results on human cells.

[SittinOnDubsWGW]

That is badass. I wish everyone would get off their high-horse and embrace this HUGE advancement in science/medicine rather than try to fight it bc of religious issues.

[Dent]

This guy was awarded a nobel prize last year for discoveries related to the first post.
Shinya Yamanaka - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Now it has been demonstrated in vivo, yipee!


Researchers have reprogrammed adult mouse cells to behave like embryonic stem cells, without the need for a stay in a Petri dish.
The technique, published today in Nature1, allows researchers to reprogram cells in living mice without removing those cells from their natural environment. Initial tests suggest that these cells are able to take on a wider variety of identities than those generated by earlier methods.

link dump :
Stem cells created in living mice : Nature News & Comment
BBC - Podcasts and Downloads - Science in Action first 7 minutes
BBC Radio 4 - Inside Science, Stem cell news; Science practicals; Phantom head; Sewage power