Mice tail turned into brain cells in Stanford research

Skin cells from the tails of mice were turned into neurons able to form connections crucial to brain function, a study said. The Stanford University scientists who performed the feat said it should work with human tissue.

The research, published in the journal Nature, is the latest demonstration that cells' basic functions can be transformed by inserting or turning on the right genes in their DNA. In this case, that was accomplished without first turning the skin cells into the equivalent of embryonic stem cells before they were changed into different kinds of body cells.

The work provides a more efficient way to make neurons from the skin of people with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases than a method developed four years ago by Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan. Yamanaka's breakthrough showed that skin cells from mice or humans could be made into stem cells and manipulated again to become any cell in the body.

Two years ago, Douglas Melton, a researcher at Harvard University's Stem Cell Institute who focuses on diabetes, showed that one cell in the pancreas could be turned into another without first reverting to a primitive, embryo-like cell.

Melton said the Stanford work was a major advance because it starts with cells that can be easily obtained from a person.