The father is the director of the factory, and the son receives the Nobel Prize... This discovery has changed the understanding of cells

Muscle cells do not need to transmit neurotransmitters like brain cells, and brain cells do not need to have the same nutrient absorption efficiency as intestinal cells

It was once believed that once a cell had a special function and shape, it would never return to its former appearance, nor could it become another cell

Graduate student who overturned the conclusion

To evaluate these two hypotheses, in 1952, two scientists transplanted the nucleus of the early embryonic cells of the leopard frog (Rana pipiens) into an enucleated egg

About 4 years later, a young man named John Gurdon started his postgraduate career at Oxford University and quickly achieved a key result

It is conceivable that many scientists do not believe that such a disruptive discovery was made by a young graduate student

▲Gurdon pioneered the field of nuclear programming (picture source: 2012 The Noble Committee for Physiology or medicine.

These results show that even fully differentiated cells have totipotent nuclei and they can still guide the formation of all types of cells

Relay on the other side of the earth

When Gurdon made a series of breakthroughs, Osaka, Japan, on the other side of the earth, gave birth to a baby who would push the field to a higher dimension in the future

Because of his love of judo and rugby in his life, Shinya Yamanaka often suffers from severe leg pain, which makes him choose sports medicine as his university direction

During his Ph.

But the reality is very cruel.

In follow-up research, he found that the deletion of certain genes can make embryonic stem cells proliferate, but they cannot differentiate correctly

Four magic factors

According to previous research by molecular biologist Harold Weintraub, he already knows that regulating a single gene can transform fibroblasts into muscle cells

And his past experience in the field of embryonic stem cells has become a key pillar of subsequent research

They selected fibroblasts as experimental subjects and set a condition that they can survive only when they behave like embryonic stem cells

In the combination of 24 factors, 4 factors Oct3/4, Sox2, Klf4 and c-Myc are indispensable

▲The team of Shinya Yamanaka pioneered iPSC technology (picture source: 2012 The Noble Committee for Physiology or medicine.
Illustration: Mattias Karlen)

After the first generation of iPSC is injected into nude mice, it can develop into various types of cell tissues such as nerve tissue, muscle cells and small intestine cells, but some genes are still epigenetic differently from embryonic stem cells
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In subsequent research, he obtained second-generation iPSCs that behaved more like embryonic stem cells
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After these cells are injected into mouse blastocysts, they can successfully develop into individuals, and some organs will contain the origin of iPSC
.

Later, human iPSCs were also manufactured through these four factors, and they can also differentiate into different human cell types in nude mice
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iPSC can differentiate into almost all types of cells, and has the same vigorous growth ability as embryonic stem cells, which has extremely important application potential in the medical and clinical fields
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▲iPSC has broad application prospects (picture source: 2012 The Noble Committee for Physiology or medicine.
Illustration: Mattias Karlen)

About two months after Shinya Yamanaka reported on iPSC, Kyoto University established the iPSC Cell Research and Application Center
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The center has been promoting safer, clinical-grade iPS cell lines
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Perhaps in the future, transplanting iPSCs can solve some diseases caused by damaged cells and unable to grow normally, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
.

The relay between Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka determined that "mature cells can be reprogrammed into a pluripotent state", and they also shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
.

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