Careful reprogramming yields specialized cells able to develop into any tissue type. Such cells, known as induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, have been made by using viruses to insert four key genes into their genome, but this carries the risk of turning the cells cancerous. A new method not only does away with genes, it also seems to be more efficient.
Derrick Rossi at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and his colleagues chemically modified RNAs transcribed from the four genes — KLF4, c-MYC, OCT4 and SOX2 — and introduced these into human fibroblast cells. This method (pictured bottom, in Petri dishes) proved more efficient at generating iPS cells than the virus method (pictured top). Furthermore, treating the iPS cells with an additional RNA transcript turned them into muscle cells.
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Stem cells: Reprogramming cells with RNA. Nature 467, 637 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/467637b
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/467637b
