The Irish Times - Thursday, December 3, 2009

The most important scientific breakthroughs of the past 10 years

Reprogrammed pluripotent cells

Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka shocked the world in November 2007 when he announced he had successfully “reprogrammed” ordinary adult skin cells to become something akin to an embryonic stem cell. The implications are profound, given the strong scientific belief that in time these cells may be used to cure currently intractable diseases. The previous main source for pluripotent stem cells was by destroying living human embryos, something ethically unpalatable for many. Yamanaka and colleagues discovered a way to turn adult cells back into a pluripotent state, opening up the potential for stem cell research free of the ethical complexities. The method also delivers stem cells perfectly matched to an individual, and without the risk of rejection, given the donor can be the recipient. Much research remains to be done, but if successful then scientists will have a powerful new tool in the battle against disease.

Cloning

Cloning hasn’t gone away you know. Dolly the sheep (1996-2003) is undoubtedly the most famous clone, being the first mammal cloned by inserting an adult cell into an emptied-out egg cell, but the work has continued apace. The last decade has seen a surprising collection of animals join the cloned brigade. A rhesus monkey was cloned in 2000, to be joined in subsequent years by horses, cattle, cats and mules. In 2001 the guar – a large southern Asian bovine – in 2001 became the first endangered species to be cloned, and in 2009 the camel and the Indian water buffalo were cloned. Development of the science could open the way to cloning extinct species, such as the woolly mammoth or make less fanciful Jurassic Park’s recreation of dinosaurs. Its scary side, however, is producing human clones for tissue-matched body parts.

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