Turning Skin Cells to Stem Cells / DNA Mutations

An interesting quote from an interesting story on Discovery by Ed Young on an interesting stem cell mutations paper in Nature from an interesting group of UC San Diego researchers co-led by interesting folks in the Department of Bioengineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering.

Interested? Below, from the Discovery story.

(L-R) Bioengineering professor Kun Zhang, bioengineering Ph.D. student Athurva Gore, and bioengineering alumna and staff researcher Alice Li are authors on the Nature paper. Photo taken in the Kun lab in the Department of Bioengineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

As a result, Kun Zhang, who led Gore and Li’s study, is optimistic. He says that we may have found some abnormalities in iPSCs, but we also have the right tools to screen for them. “The first step of solving a problem is to have an accurate understanding of it, and I think we are there. I believe that, guided by these screening tools, the community will come up with many creative solutions in the near future.”