The field of stem cell research is an amazingly fast-paced and competitive one. It seems that in the latest big discovery, two teams have figured out how to get human skin cells to behave like embryonic stem cells. Wow. This route avoids the whole human egg/stem cell issue that has deprived many labs of federal funding. They caution, however, that by using a virus to ferry four genes into the cell, a technique referred to as ‘direct programming‘, there is a certain cancer risk for now, but there should be a way to avoid this in the future.
Tags: biology, direct programming, genetics, politics, religion, Science, stem cells


