Every cell in our body has exactly the same genetic information, and what differs the cell in eye, for example, and the one from your stomach is their differentiation, or maturation process. The pluripotent cells are those that were not “programmed” yet, like a raw biological material that can assume any role in our body.
The use of stem cells to build specific tissues (e.g. liver, skin) has been around us for a while. It has been successfully induced to form several cell linages and complex tissues. This research unraveled the potential use of these cells in the modern medicine and several people started freezing their son’s and daughter’s umbilical cords, “just in case” . But the use of the stem cells has its limits.
To push these limits and to understand the process of specialization, researches start looking into how “undifferentiate” cells, rewinding, for example, a skin cell back into the pluripotent stage and then differentiating it into a different tissue. These have been made basically by the use of molecular biology, manipulating the gene expression through the introduction of DNA material into the cell. Now, two different groups introduced a different technique. They were able to transform a specialized skin cell into a completely different tissue without manipulation of the host cell DNA. The first group reprogrammed a skin cell from a mouse into an active neurone using only the interference that small molecules has on the cell. For this, they screened thousands of different small molecules, recording their effect in the cell and subsequently using different molecules in a specific order to induce, step by step, the differentiation of these cells into the desired ones. The same idea was followed by second group independently, which found a different chemical cocktail to change human cells into active neurones as well. In this case, they used skin cells from a healthy person and from someone diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Surprisingly, the new neurone cell showed the same traits corresponding to the development of the Alzheimer’s disease, opening a completely new perspective to the development of degenerative diseases.
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Wenxiang Hu, Binlong Qiu, Wuqiang Guan, Qinying Wang, Min Wang, Wei Li, Longfei Gao, Lu Shen, Yin Huang, Gangcai Xie, Hanzhi Zhao, Ying Jin, Beisha Tang, Yongchun Yu, Jian Zhao, Gang Pei, Direct Conversion of Normal and Alzheimer’s Disease Human Fibroblasts into Neuronal Cells by Small Molecules, Cell Stem Cell, Volume 17, Issue 2, 6 August 2015, Pages 204-212, ISSN 1934-5909, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.stem.2015.07.006.
Kimberley Babos, Justin K. Ichida, Small Molecules Take a Big Step by Converting Fibroblasts into Neurons, Cell Stem Cell, Volume 17, Issue 2, 6 August 2015, Pages 127-129, ISSN 1934-5909, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.stem.2015.07.018.
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1934590915003173)
Wenxiang Hu, Binlong Qiu, Wuqiang Guan, Qinying Wang, Min Wang, Wei Li, Longfei Gao, Lu Shen, Yin Huang, Gangcai Xie, Hanzhi Zhao, Ying Jin, Beisha Tang, Yongchun Yu, Jian Zhao, Gang Pei, Direct Conversion of Normal and Alzheimer’s Disease Human Fibroblasts into Neuronal Cells by Small Molecules, Cell Stem Cell, Volume 17, Issue 2, 6 August 2015, Pages 204-212, ISSN 1934-5909, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.stem.2015.07.006.
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1934590915003057)
