Stem Cells: The Black Box of Reprogramming

December 10, 2014

(Nature) – he hope is that pluripotent cells could be used to repair damaged or diseased tissue — something that moved closer to reality this year, when retinal cells derived from iPS cells were transplanted into a woman with eye disease, marking the first time that reprogrammed cells were transplanted into humans. There is just one hitch. No one, not even the dozen or so groups of scientists who intensively study reprogramming, knows how it happens. They understand that differentiated cells go in, and pluripotent cells come out the other end, but what happens in between is one of biology’s impenetrable black boxes.