Today’s Popular Posts
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Popular Posts
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Posts in this Impact Area: (Stem Cells)
- ePSC: A new type of pluripotent stem cell
- Stem cell injection improves aging cells in mice
- Stem Cells: An excellent coverage of the medical reality
- Reprogramming cells: The post stem cell future?
- First steps: Converting skin cells to blood cells without stem cells
- First clinical trial: Embryonic stem cells for spinal repair
- Stem Cells: Using RNA to reprogram adult cells
- Stem cells: Myc does much more
- The dynamic state of embryonic stem cells
- Reversing silenced genes improves quality of induced stem cells
- Growing stem cells to become hair cells of the inner ear
- Neural stem cells: Going back to a brain with more plasticity
- New transplantation method: Organ + stem cells
- Finally(?)…artificially making blood stem cells in quantity
- Induced stem cells: Not such good news…
- New method: Creating stem cells from fat cells
- Stem cell epigenomic development mapped
- Why do some cancers resist treatment?
- The potentially polymorphous cell (a revolution in the making?)
- Stem cells to neurons to live transplant
- Research finding: Possibly a new way to create stem cells
- Watch for impact: Stem cells in China
- A new type of stem cell: Dermal
- Amniotic stem cells show more promise
- Studying infertility using laboratory created germ cells
- The race for safe stem cells
- Stem cell converts
- Skin cells – to stem cells – to liver cells
- Father's goat
- Stem cells from the umbilical cord

Research finding: Possibly a new way to create stem cells
Let’s describe this research backwards – from (potential) result to experiment. One of the most important areas of stem cell research involves how to make stem cells, bypassing the need for extracting and maintaining (controversial) embryonic stem cell lines. So far there have been two approaches. One way is to introduce adult cell nuclei into an egg. The egg contains factors that wipe away all the adult cell markers (epigenetic markers that define what a cell should be – how its genes are expressed). This results in a stem cell, but involves the ethical issues of using live eggs. Another way is to get adult cells to express critical stem cell factors, thus forcing them back to a stem cell state. However, this approach requires using retroviruses to force the gene expression – retroviruses that can potentially cause cancer. What if there is another way?
The approach used by researchers at the University of North Carolina, School of Medicine began with searching for a specific protein complex that is responsible for removing the epigenetic markers from male (sperm) cells. Epigenetic markers are also proteins, created by DNA/RNA but separate from the genetic material. They accompany the genetic material like chemical tags on the genomes of each cell and help determine when and how the genes are expressed. By experimenting with the process of removing epigenetic markers, called DNA demethylation, the researchers eventually isolated a particular protein – elongator, which is required for demethylation when the egg strips epigenetic markers from the sperm.
The findings on the role of the elongator protein complex are significant, but incomplete. Zhang and his team are actively pursuing more detailed knowledge of the structure and composition of elongator, while also experimenting with its use in creating stem cells from adult cells. This is to say that while the research may lead to a third way of producing stem cells, there’s a longish road ahead before the process is reasonably well understood and can be successfully applied to real-world requirements.