dedifferentiation

A team from the Salk Institute in La Jolla led by Inder Verma has reported dedifferentiation in a paper in Science some important findings that I believe make their paper in the top 10 as a candidate for paper of the year. The paper, entitled “Dedifferentiation of Neurons and Astrocytes by Oncogenes Can Induce Gliomas in Mice” makes striking findings. The authors show that mature neurons and astrocytes (incredibly specialized, “terminally differentiated” cells) can be dedifferentiated. This is groundbreaking because these types of cells, …Read More