[HN Gopher] Scientists find way to wipe a cell's memory to repro... ___________________________________________________________________ Scientists find way to wipe a cell's memory to reprogram it as a stem cell Author : rbanffy Score : 108 points Date : 2023-08-27 21:37 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.uwa.edu.au) (TXT) w3m dump (www.uwa.edu.au) | idopmstuff wrote: | Top of the front page and no comments? I take it this is being | upvoted by lots of folks like myself that are relative laymen but | hopeful that this is a meaningful advance. Won't someone explain | the practical significance? | dboreham wrote: | If you have a stem cell then in theory you can program it to | differentiate into any kind of cell, allowing things like | tissue regrowth, repair injuries, make a new lung or liver etc. | eb0la wrote: | Stem cell research has a lot of controversy due to the fact | some years ago you could only get stem cells from embryos. | For some people (like the Catholic Church) that was a huge | ethical issue. Now it is not. | vikramkr wrote: | Tried to provide a rough summary, hopefully it's helpful: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37287128 | qup wrote: | Layperson here: Stem cells are like clay. They're very useful. | | Figuring out all these fine details are likely to lead us to be | able to reset our bodies and either drastically extend our | lifetimes, or give us a better body in our later years. | | This one step might not be part of your medical treatment | anytime soon, but we're unlocking fundamental knowledge that we | will be wielding, and we don't yet know how powerful that will | be. | | I believe this (human aging and longevity, biomed) is the most | important work. | gravelc wrote: | As usual, the manuscript itself is a bit more discrete than the | press release, but this sentence in the conclusion shows the | potential benefits - scalable and practical resetting of | somatic stem cells, which has been a barrier in translation to | actual therapies: | | - "Our work shows that TNT reprogramming is a practical and | scalable approach to overcome these intrinsic characteristics | of hiPS cells, which is important for the clinical delivery of | this technology." | rolph wrote: | stem cells are pluripotent, meaning they have more than one | developmental fate. further on they become putative, meaning | the possibilities are narrowed to a particular cell type. | | stem cell therapies used to involve extensive selection | processes, to harvest cells that develop according to | therapeutic goals. | | wiping out determined fate, means far less process required, | and produces an effectively universal [or near so] stem cell | that will be fate determined by surrounding tissue and | diffusive signals. | tchaffee wrote: | It seems like we are so close to some huge breakthroughs in | longevity. With stem cells we can do things like this. | | "The extent of change caused by a heart attack is too great for | the heart to repair itself or to prevent further damage from | occurring. Notably, however, cardiopoietic stem cell therapy | reversed, either fully or partially, two-thirds of these disease- | induced changes, such that 85% of all cellular functional | categories affected by disease responded favorably to treatment," | says Andre Terzic, M.D., Ph.D., director of Mayo Clinic's Center | for Regenerative Medicine. | | https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-re... | hanniabu wrote: | What are the implications? | rolph wrote: | a lot less work to achieve desired outcome. nonsurgical means | of tissue repair, replacement, or rejuvenation. | hanniabu wrote: | Do you just inject stem cells into the affected area? | rolph wrote: | [delayed] | 29athrowaway wrote: | Immortal trillionaires. | vikramkr wrote: | Very cool research! The title is poorly worded, so the quick | summary is that we've known how to create stem cells (induced | pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs) from non-stem human cells for a | while, but they aren't as "good" at being stem cells as embryonic | stem cells (ESCs). So this paper is not presenting a new way of | making stem cells, but is very cool nonetheless. | | Sidequest - epigenetics. You have your DNA that codes for the | proteins and rnas that do lot sof important life things. But all | your cells have the same DNA so how is a skin cell and a neuron | both able to exist with the same DNA? There's a layer of | regulation on top of the genes that determines what genes are | expressed, how much, and what forms (you can get different | proteins from the same DNA sequence, look up exons and introns if | curious). If these forces of gene regulation are inherited across | generations of cells (e.g. when a white blood cells divides, it | makes another white blood cell with all those relevant regulatory | factors set without having to start again from a stem cells), we | call that "epigenetics" | | This paper looked at the epigenetic factors that result in iPSCs | not behaving like ESCs and identified differences/aberrations in | how certain epigenetic patterns (some keywords to Google include | DNA methylation and histones in epigenetics) develop through the | process of becoming stem cells/reprogramming. The technique they | developed resets the aberrations in the iPSCs to make them | function better. | | (Warning - opinion/speculation/I reserve the right to be wrong): | This is very cool in terms of making better iPSCs for research | purposes. I'm not sure what impact it would have in using iPSCs | in medicine. iPSCs are essentially barely controlled cancer cells | which is not great for putting inside people, and this paper | doesn't provide a new way of creating stem cells. Maybe better | reprogramming makes them easier to control and safer/more | functiononal? But using them therapeutically is a different | conversation and not every paper needs to solve all the things in | the universe, even if that would make for a more clickable title. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-08-27 23:00 UTC)