Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells -- adult cells that have been de-differentiated into an embryonic-like state -- have "hotspots" in their genomes that are not completely reprogrammed, according to a new study in linkurl:Nature.;http://www.nature.com/nature/index.html
The research demonstrates that iPS cells are fundamentally different from embryonic stem (ES) cells, and will require more analysis prior to use in therapies and disease models."The results indicate once again that we still have so much to learn about this fascinating process of reprogramming," said linkurl:George Daley;http://daley.med.harvard.edu/ of Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital Boston, who was not involved in the research, in an email to The Scientist. "While iPS cells are remarkably similar to ES cells, this study points out important differences, and gives us an ever more refined view of the nature of iPS cells." After producing the first genome-wide methylation maps of...
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Nissim Benvenisty, linkurl:Wikimedia Commons;http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Human_embryonic_stem_cells.png |
Ecker, J.R. et al., "Hotspots of aberrant epigenomic reprogramming in human induced pluripotent stem cells," Nature, doi:10.1038/nature09798.
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