Stem cells branch out
Differentiation of embryonic stem (ES) cells, which are originally totipotent, puts increasing restrictions on the final fates that a cell can achieve. This simple idea was upset last year when neural stem cells were shown to produce blood cells in irradiated adult mice. In the 2 June issue of Science, Clarke et al. show that neural stem cells injected into embryos can generate a wide variety of tissues including cells in the central nervous system, heart, liver, and intestine (Science 2000, 288
Differentiation of embryonic stem (ES) cells, which are originally totipotent, puts increasing restrictions on the final fates that a cell can achieve. This simple idea was upset last year when neural stem cells were shown to produce blood cells in irradiated adult mice. In the 2 June issue of
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