Biologist George Church, examining a molecular model.
, the geneticist behind the Personal Genome Project
, is envisioning a package deal: get your genome sequenced, and he and his collaborators will develop a line of induced pluripotent stem cells
(IPS) from your tissue, so in the future, you'll be able upgrade your system with organs and tissues bearing both your genes and special extras like genes from centenarians. It's combining stem cells with gene therapy
, David Ewing Duncan over at Technology Review asks him to elaborate. Why does he think this science fiction scenario is in our near future?
I don't think people have fully appreciated how quickly adult stem cells and sequencing and synthetic biology have progressed. They have progressed by orders of magnitude since we got [induced pluripotent stem cells]... Let's use stem cells in bone marrow as an ...
