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Turning Back the Cellular Clock: A Farewell to Embryonic Stem Cells? |
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Scientific American (12.08) - When historians chronicle the stem cell research wars, Shinya Yamanaka will likely go down as a peacemaker. The Japanese scientist has helped send the field on a surprising end run around the moral debate surrounding embryonic stem cells, the creation of which requires the destruction of embryos. Last year Yamanaka led one of two teams that showed that normal human skin cells can be genetically reprogrammed into the equivalent of stem cells. These so-called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) seem to be essentially identical to embryonic stem cells and possess the ability to become any cell. More... |
