Maybe Meme [dot] Com

……
The research, published today in the journal Nature, is the latest demonstration that cells’ basic functions can be transformed by inserting or turning on the right genes in their DNA. In this case, that was accomplished without first turning the skin cells into the equivalent of embryonic stem cells before they were changed into different kinds of body cells.

The work provides a more efficient way to make neurons from the skin of people with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases than a method developed four years ago by Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan. Yamanaka’s breakthrough showed that skin cells from mice or humans could be made into stem cells and manipulated again to become any cell in the body. The paper “might be a landmark,” said Jeanne Loring, director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine at the Scripps Institute in La Jolla, California. “There’s a long history of failure in this field. Researchers tried for 30 years to convert a common cell type into neurons. People published papers, but no one ever made a real neuron.”
…….
After a month, a few of the skin cells showed signs of having turned into brain cells. The team then used a trial-and- error process to identify three genes from among the 19 that could do the job on their own.

Using the three, Wernig’s team found that in just two weeks, 20 percent of the skin cells had morphed into neurons.

“That means reprogramming doesn’t only go backward, but can occur in any direction,” Wernig said in a Jan. 22 telephone interview. “If you extrapolate from this, you could probably turn any cell in your body into any other cell if you just know the right factors. A year ago, I would not really have believed this was possible.” Wernig and his colleagues are trying to do the same thing with human cells and Stanford has applied for a patent on the process. If it works in human cells, researchers could use the method to turn skin cells from a patient with Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease, for example, into neurons with the genetic defects that cause the condition.
…….
Before the cells have practical use, they’ll have to be shown to be true neurons, Loring said in a Jan. 25 e-mail.

“The question now is how these genetically engineered neurons stack up against real neurons in a real test — can they be used to repair the brains of mice that have experimentally induced Parkinson’s disease, for example?” she said. “There’s a lot of work to do but it’s exciting.”
…..