Forbes October 9, 2024
The world woke up 17 years ago to an astounding scientific breakthrough: a team of Japanese scientists, led by Shinya Yamanaka, had reprogrammed skin cells to resemble an embryonic state.
The news reverberated quickly across the world, in front page headlines, as people grasped the significance of this achievement: For the first time, scientists had turned back the clock on a cell’s development by adding four genes, now called “Yamanaka factors,” to reverse a mature skin cell back to pluripotency, the state which can give rise to nearly all cell types in the body. No embryo was needed in the process.
I remember how fascinated I was when I first heard the news. It sounded like science fiction to me...
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