Saturday, December 20th, 2008
The journal 'Science' has described tissue reprogramming as the greatest scientific advance of the year. I am with them on that.
Scientists in Japan and the USA have found ways of reversing cell development and making them go back to the stem cells of the embryo. (Remember my question of how the body stops growing?) Now stem cells are the very start of our existence and are completely undifferentiated. They can become anything - toenails, lungs, eyes - and they can be used in so many healing ways and just might let us sort things like Parkinson's disease and diabetes.
Of course, there are trials to go but if they go well, this means that we can have stem cells freely available and will no longer have to nick them from embryos.
I do think that this is wonderful.
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