Brain and Skin Cells Transformed into Heart Muscle

Brain and Skin


Brain and skin cells contain now been reprogrammed into heart cells using RNA, a molecule related to DNA that is crucial to the creation of proteins inside a cell. This the first time a direct transformation of this type has been acheived by this technique.

In general, heart-muscle cells might help repair an injured heart by replacing lost tissue, making them intriguing to scientists who study how misplaced or damaged tissue or organs could be regenerated.

The team, led by Tae Kyung Kim of the Perelman educates of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, extracted messenger RNA from a heart cell, and after that flooded brain and skin cells with it. This mRNA contains the instructions, derived from DNA, to generate proteins, the building blocks of cells. These cells then contained a large amount more heart mRNA than skin or brain mRNA, causing the cell to build heart-cell proteins. The presence of the heart-cell proteins unfair the expression of genes and encouraged the production of extra heart-cell proteins.

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