The Niche
Papers: Reprogramming [cells], resetting [expression], and revising [ideas on cell fate]
Here are some recently published papers that caught my eye: a pair of papers showing that small molecules boost the success of turning regular-old cells into embryonic-like cells (called induced pluripotent cells); one paper even shows that the ubiquitous pluripotency gene Oct4 is not required. These are in Nature Biotechnology and Cell Stem Cell, and they’ll be up on my site as formal research highlights on July 3. You can see them now below. The author of the Cell Stem Cell paper recently spoke to us about how small molecules can control stem cells.