Biology's 'Black Box'

Scientists can take mature cells from your body and, with a little nudge, ‘re-program’ them to an immature state. These immature cells, called pluripotent stem cells, can develop into almost any body tissue so could be used to create exciting new treatments to repair damaged or diseased tissue. But scientists first need to understand how re-programming works. It’s been described as the ‘black box’ of biology: adult cells go in, and stem cells come out – but what happens in-between? It was thought that cohesin molecules played a key role. Now, researchers at the MRC’s Clinical Sciences Centre have shown that cohesin isn't needed to re-program adult cells. The team fused adult cells (small) and stem cells (large) together to initiate re-programming, and found that when they deleted cohesin (red), re-programming still took place. Lead researcher, Matthias Merkenschlager, says the work extends our understanding of how to best make stem cells.

Written by Deborah Oakley

Deborah Oakley

Writer

Deborah is researching healthy cognitive ageing at the University of Cambridge. She previously worked as a science communicator in London, working closely with the BPoD team.

• Image by Matthias Merkenschlager
• MRC's Clinical Sciences Centre
• Copyright held by original author
• Research published in Genes and Development, January 2015