I haven't heard of it... I'll check some news sites I guess. I don't have a TV so I'm way out of the loop heh.

yeah i am too---i only have a tv at work and the one time i heard something interesting i missed it.

Stem cells roughly equivalent to embryonic stem cells can be retrieved from adult skin cells now, without creating an embryo first. Scientists can now genetically change a skin cell back into it's original, embryonic form.

It's called "direct programming".

Scientists announced Tuesday that they have generated human stem cells with embryonic qualities using human skin cells and not embryos.

wow that is really interesting. ( love your dog by the way.)

so how does this help the stem cell research? does it make it simply easier to obtain stem cells? What do they call the stem cells as a result of direct programming?

It removes the controversy of killing embryos so the conservatives are fine.

i see

That's a great question, and here's your answer:

"induced pluripotent stem" (iPS) cells

which have the properties of human embryonic stem cells and are acquired by direct reprogramming of adult cells.


The one drawback so far is that embryonic stem cells are "totipotent", which means they can become any type of cell in the human body, whereas iPS cells are pluripotent (as the name indicates) which means they can become many, but not all, cell types.

is there a way ato determine or influence what type of cell it will be come? or are you just stuck with what you end up with?

You can choose exactly what kind of cell you want, to my knowledge. With embryonic cells you can choose from every single cell in the body; with adult cells your choices are almost as big but a few are unavailable.

Thanks Eiri