Japanese researchers develop new way of creating stem cells

This is pretty monumental, and I'm kicking myself for not getting to it sooner. Stem cells, specifically pluripotent stem cells, are a current scientific target because they have the proverbial "blank slate:" like a theoretical infant that can become a doctor, firefighter, or animal trainer, these cells can differentiate into anything in the future, be they stomach cells, brain cells, or blood cells. As such, they are extremely useful, such as in organ regeneration and transplants (another issue close to home, plus they covered it tonight on the Science Channel), but at the same time, they are surrounded by controversy because for the longest time, the only source was embryonic tissue.

As published last week in Nature, a team of scientists in Japan have found a way to reprogram body cells into pluripotent stem cells. They determined that exposing mammalian somatic cells to a strong external stimulus, like acid, reprogrammed these cells without the introduction of a new nucleus or different molecules to transcribe the DNA into RNA. This was a previously unknown mechanism, but further studies showed that these reprogrammed cells, called STAP cells (STAP standing for stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency), have a lot less DNA methylation. While somatic cells would normally have genes not applicable to their function turned off (i.e. a nerve cell turning off eye-related genes), STAP cells don't have as many genes turned off and can therefore fill different functions.

Admittedly, I'm most excited about the use of this for organ regeneration because this would reduce a lot of transplant-related problems. For example, it can allow doctors to take a donor's heart, take out all of the muscle cells it so only the connective tissue is left, and fill in the heart with the patient's own muscle cells (here derived from somatic cells that were converted into STAPs and induced into being muscle cells). This would prevent any chance of rejection because it's the patient's own cells and thus allow the patient to carry on without having to take anti rejection meds and then be restricted as to what they can do.