Defining Pluripotency

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Do you want to live a longer life in good health? Simple practices can make some difference, such as exercise or calorie restriction. But over the long haul all that really matters is progress in medicine: building new classes of therapy to repair and reverse the known root causes of aging. The sooner these treatments arrive, the more lives will be saved. Find out how to help »

You have to keep an eye on what's going on in infrastructural science. It's the improvements in cost, accuracy, and efficiency - that tend not to get as much press - that create an environment in which real breakthroughs can happen. Take this for example, via GEN News: "An international team of investigators determined that pluripotent stem cell lines display significant chemical similarity. The cell samples used in the study all had a particular protein-protein network in common. ... the profiles uniquely characteristic of the pluripotent populations, whether they came from embryonic stem cells or induced pluripotent cells. The researchers also found these profiles were shared by mouse embryonic stem cells, induced mouse pluripotent stem cells, and human oocytes. Detailed analysis showed that the interacting protein elements can be used to predict whether genetically induced stem cells will be pluripotent." Standardization is another thing to watch for - it will certainly speed things up.

Link: http://www.genengnews.com/news/bnitem.aspx?name=40923389