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Article: Mouse method turns skin cells to stem cells.(BIOMEDICINE)(reprogramming mouse skin cells)(Brief article)
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- July 14, 2007
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Scientists have reprogrammed mouse skin cells to mimic embryonic stem cells that can morph into any type of cell in the body.
Last year, Shinya Yamanaka and his team at Kyoto University in Japan found that they could insert into skin fibroblast cells active copies of four genes earlier identified as essential to a stem cell's pluripotency--the ability to turn into any cell. But the researchers had trouble isolating the less than 0.1 percent of skin cells that became fully reprogrammed by the added genes.
Yamanaka and his colleagues now describe online and in an upcoming Nature how they also inserted a novel marker gene that singled out the completely ...