Turning Skin Cells Into Heart Cells

Salsaman writes "The company which cloned Dolly the sheep has now apparently succeeded in turning cow skin cells into heart cells."

No rejection problems

[maddogsparky]

If someone can use there own body to provide cells used to form replacement tissues, there aren't any issues with rejection. Could be a boon to all those waiting for compatible donors for organ transplants. I wonder how soon we will be seeing educational institutions providing degrees in organ/tissue engineering?

Again?

[BobGregg]

Can someone explain the difference between what this company is doing and the research from this story [slashdot.org]? They both seem to involve reverting adult differentiated cells back into stem cells. Granted this would be a wonderful boon, but it seems like just a month ago peer journals were doubtful the research was even correct....

Still a long way to go

[destine]

Its quite interesting that they can get sample tissue to differentiate. This has lots of uses, but its still a long way till we can see donor organs available. This will still be useful for the cultivation of single tissue grafts and such, but its a long way from creating an organ. Just because you can differentiate to one type of tissue doesn't mean you can create liver for example. Still, this is great advancement in genetics and is one step closer to us understanding how all this stuff works. The next ten years are going to be amazing for biotech.