What do you get when you mix Doritos and mice? Apparently see-through mice. Of course, it’s not that simple but the finding related to Doritos has captured people’s attention. Doritos and mice I’ve had several people ask me about the Doritos orange dye and “transparent mice” paper. It is interesting that the orange dye in […]
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 »
What is direct reprogramming ? There’s some big, positive news on this stem cell front today. All chemical direct reprogramming 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
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 »
Professor Charles Brenner of City of Hope does great research, but I also applaud his efforts against longevity hype. Recently, Brenner and James Timmons publicly questioned some of the work of Harvard Professor David Sinclair. It’s a notable case of academics intensely disagreeing in the public space. Background While it’s interesting, it’s also a somewhat
Perspectives as Charles Brenner challenges David Sinclair on longevity claims Read More »
Toward the end of each year I make predictions for the stem cell and regenerative medicine field for the coming year. I’ve been doing this for more than a dozen years in various forms. In this post I’m looking at the (gene-edited, stemness enriched) tea leaves for 2025 for the regenerative arena. These predictions include
25 stem cell & regenerative medicine predictions for 2025 Read More »