In a pair of landmark studies, two groups of scientists announced Tuesday that they have reprogrammed human skin cells to act like embryonic stem cells, whose potential to mature into any other kind of cell in the body may ultimately prove key to curing a number of diseases. CNN July 20
So the two independent groups did about the same thing, took skin cells, reprogrammed them by i think activating 4 genes using viral method, and got them to mimic stem cells. Published in Science and Cell. The big hoo ha is that it’s done on human cells, previously it has worked on mice. Well okay, so that’s a nice step. But I think the method isn’t that great. They need to use viruses, and they haven’t finished testing whether the cells are truly stem cell grade. For all you know they might be just decent pluripotent cells. At least it avoids the embryo problems. It’s so difficult and tedious to get human embryos. Can 4 transcription factors really encompass all the dedifferentiation?
The funny thing was that those anti-embryo-research groups are very happy about this. Is this a victory for them? We are not switching to skin cells for the sake of avoiding embryonic stem cells, it’s just cheaper and more convenient.
4 transcription factors is not enough, not with the kind of complexity in the cell, not with gazillion interactions the genes go through. DNA is alive i tell you, some boggling linear entity. =p seriously, some of the things that it does is incredulously complicated.