Skin Cells Converted Directly To Brain Cells, For First Time Ever
New cell transformation technique skips stem-cell intermediary stage For the first time ever, scientists have induced skin cells to transform directly into neurons. Previously, for mature cells to change type, scientists had to first transform the skin cells back into stem cells, and then grow the stem cells into a different adult cell type. By cutting out the middle step and speeding up the process, this new technique drastically increases the feasibility of using cell reprogramming to treat diseases like Alzheimer's disease and ALS. Writing in the journal Nature, Stanford University researchers described how they induced the change by inserting only three genes into cultured skin cells. Once those three genes activated, the skin cells converted into fully functioning nerve cells that even formed synapse connections with the other converted nerve cells. By speeding up the creation of nerve cells, this advance circumvents the controversy and difficulty of experimenting...