About twenty years ago a science story made big news of a so-called anti-aging Methuselah gene. Methuselah gene and anti-aging The claim was that this DNA conferred long life on people. Hence the name Methuselah, which refers to a man from the Bible who reportedly lived 969 years. The so-called Methuselah gene was at first not a …
Perspectives on David Sinclair anti-aging Cell pub & in vivo reprogramming Read More »
Epigenetic reprogramming is a term used in cell biology that is increasingly ending up in news stories too. Unfortunately, some folks, especially in the cellular rejuvenation and anti-aging space, are getting this term and other things confused. Just to start off, epigenetic reprogramming does not specifically mean cellular rejuvenation. The goal of today’s post is …
Defining epigenetic reprogramming, cellular reprogramming & rejuvenation Read More »
Let’s start with a couple of new pieces on in vivo reprogramming. The idea here is to do something like making iPS cells but doing it inside organisms and not quite pushing cells all the way back to pluripotency. Just younger, healthier cells. Why do that? The goal is to achieve a kind of anti-aging …
Weekly reads: reprogramming aging, astrocytes, cartilage, ChatGPT Read More »
We often don’t think of them that way but reproductive cells like sperm and egg are also relatives of stem cells, and it turns out that there are stem cells that make the reproductive cells too like sperm stem cells. Sperm and germ cell stem cells DNMT3A-dependent DNA methylation is required for spermatogonial stem cells …
Recommend reads: CRISPR baby guy free, DNMT3, sperm, Editas, hearing loss, reprogramming Read More »
A piece on human tails and how we lost them caught my eye so I’ll start my weekly reads with that. This week I had the fewest Zoom meetings in ages, which allowed me to get more work done in my own lab and more reading. How about that? I even had some in-person meetings …
Recommended reads: a tale of human tails, heart reprogramming, pericytes, microglia Read More »
There’s some big, positive news on the stem cell front today. Two new innovative papers both by teams led by Sheng Ding of Gladstone Institutes with UCSF report all-chemical direct reprogramming of human somatic cells. Ding’s team took skin cells and by exposing them to cocktails of small molecules was able to turn them directly into …
Big stem cell news: dynamic duo of all-chemical direct reprogramming reports Read More »
The STAP papers on making iPS like cells using acid treatment of differentiated cells really has people talking. See embryo at right made from GFP reporter STAP cells that glow green. As I said in my review of the papers yesterday, there are still some critical things we do not know about STAP cells and I …
More thoughts from STAP acid reprogramming stem cell paper Read More »
Near-billionaire Bryan Johnson apparently does not like getting old and he’s trying to do something transformative about it. He and his team are experimenting in a big way. As a 55-year-old myself, I can’t blame him for wanting to fight aging in general. However, his anti-aging project includes some extreme stuff. Will some in the …
Skepticism on the Bryan Johnson anti-aging extravaganza Read More »
It’s fitting, given the edginess over the election, that Halloween is falling only a few days before election day so here is a list of recommended stem cell reads for you to dive into some biomedical science. Liver buds from stem cells Generation of human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived liver buds with chemically defined and …
Sometimes we could all use a jolt of good news and cool science. Those of us in the stem cell field probably get tired at times of all the bad-ish, even if important news (like this from Michael Hiltzik of the LA Times) out there surrounding certain unproven stem cell offerings and also clinics that …
Some stem cell good news, stuff for debate, & cool pubs Read More »