Two teams of scientists independently discovered how to reprogram skin cells into stem cells. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to grow a new, straighter set of legs in a petri dish just yet, but it sounds like this is the first step in the right direction. The really significant property of this accomplishment is that it does not require human embryos to get the cells.
The one slightly disturbing aspect of the accomplishment is that the researchers used viruses to create the stem cells. The paranoid part of me immediately thought of how wicked it would be to engineer a virus that uses the same techniques but instead of creating stem cells, it creates cancerous ones. Turning something like that loose in the world is a grim prospect.
Human skin ‘reprogrammed’ to form stem cells – health – 20 November 2007 – New Scientist
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