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Mouse induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells have been shown to retain an epigenetic 'memory' of their cell type of origin. Kim et al. study this question in human cells and document both incomplete erasure of methylation and aberrant de novo methylation during reprogramming.
Creating synthetic biological circuits can be maddeningly difficult because of unpredictable stimuli and unknown variability in the system. Milias-Argeitis et al. circumvent these problems by moving control functions outside the cell—to a computer—and connecting computer and cell through optogenetics.
Transcription activator–like effector nucleases (TALENs) are a new technology for modifying the genome at specific loci of interest. Hockemeyer et al. now demonstrate the utility of TALENs for gene targeting in human pluripotent stem cells.
