Was just listening to a podcast and a neuroscientist mentioned harvesting skin cells from patients and converting them to nerve or glial cells.
How does that work? Are they literally changing the whole form and function of the same single cell? Or is it that they use the original cell as a source and produce new cells of another type from the original? Or am I just misunderstanding what they’re saying?
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Changing the whole form and function of the same single cell is closer.
Cells *differentiate* towards a particular specialization, which they do in response to particular stimuli. Because every cell has your complete genome, this involves shutting down the parts they won’t be using. However, under the right conditions you can interfere with these features that lock in a cell’s differentiation, reverse the cell to a stem-like state, and then feed them new stimuli to have them differentiate in some other direction.
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