Mutant Stem Cells Defy Rules of Development
It sounds like a practical joke, but this kind of shocking transformation is what really happened to a dish of mouse stem cells when scientists at Gladstone Institutes removed just one genestem cells destined to become heart cells suddenly resembled the precursors to brain cells.
- It sounds like a practical joke, but this kind of shocking transformation is what really happened to a dish of mouse stem cells when scientists at Gladstone Institutes removed just one genestem cells destined to become heart cells suddenly resembled the precursors to brain cells.
- On their path to becoming heart cells, for instance, embryonic stem cells first differentiate into mesoderm, one of three primitive tissues found in the earliest embryos.
- A decade ago, Gladstone Senior Investigator Shinya Yamanaka, MD, PhD, discovered how to reprogram fully differentiated adult cells into induced pluripotent stem cells.
- In particular, mesoderm cells could not become the precursors of such distant types as brain cells or gut cells.