Source: Stanford University
Date: January 27, 2010
Summary:
Even Superman needed to retire to a phone booth for a quick change. But now scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine have succeeded in the ultimate switch: transforming mouse skin cells in a laboratory dish directly into functional nerve cells with the application of just three genes. The cells make the change without first becoming a pluripotent type of stem cell — a step long thought to be required for cells to acquire new identities. The finding, published online Jan. 27 in Nature, could revolutionize the future of human stem cell therapy and recast our understanding of how cells choose and maintain their specialties in the body.
