Biosingularity links today to an article in the MIT Technology Review on the state of science with regard to directing differentiation of stem cells into more specific types and tissues. This is of course an area that has been under study for a while. It’s essential to our potential ability to engineer replacement tissues. At the heart of the issue is what makes cells — which each have the entire blueprint for your body — develop into particular types, at the level of DNA transcription.  While the pathways and molecules involved have been under investigation with some fruitful results, this is a major step in that people are beginning to integrate all of the information that’s been discovered, with an aim toward total deliberate control of cell development.

Technorati Tags: stem cells, biomedical engineering, tissue engineering