Reprogramming Cells, Yet More Progress
The Washington Post reports that "scientists for the first time have turned ordinary skin cells into what appear to be embryonic stem cells ... The technique uses laboratory-grown human embryonic stem cells [to] "reprogram" the genes in a person's skin cell, turning that skin cell into an embryonic stem cell itself." Cells are just finite state machines, albeit very complex ones, and a great many doors in medicine open as researchers understand how to manipulate cellular states and programming. This is a promising advance, but is still just a proof of concept; the manipulated cells contain "the DNA of the person who donated the skin cell and also the DNA that was in the initial embryonic stem cell." That extra DNA must be removed, which is a "substantial technical barrier."
Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/21/AR2005082101180.html