0000000000267563
AUTHOR
Sean J. Morrison
Fusion of bone-marrow-derived cells with Purkinje neurons, cardiomyocytes and hepatocytes
Recent studies have suggested that bone marrow cells possess a broad differentiation potential, being able to form new liver cells, cardiomyocytes and neurons1,2. Several groups have attributed this apparent plasticity to ‘transdifferentiation’3,4,5. Others, however, have suggested that cell fusion could explain these results6,7,8,9. Using a simple method based on Cre/lox recombination to detect cell fusion events, we demonstrate that bone-marrow-derived cells (BMDCs) fuse spontaneously with neural progenitors in vitro. Furthermore, bone marrow transplantation demonstrates that BMDCs fuse in vivo with hepatocytes in liver, Purkinje neurons in the brain and cardiac muscle in the heart, resul…
Lack of Population Diversity in Commonly Used Human Embryonic Stem-Cell Lines
To the Editor: Human embryonic stem-cell research may lead to new methods of drug discovery, insights into mechanisms of disease, and eventually, cellular therapies. The potential benefit to patient populations may depend partially on the diversity of the stem-cell lines that are available for research and clinical use. However, investigators have been unable to target their research to diverse subgroups of existing lines or to ensure the inclusion of lines from the human populations most relevant to their diseases of interest, because almost no information has been available on the human population origin of existing stem-cell lines. Therefore, with the . . .