Question: how can a skin cell become a nerve cell

Jenni Tilley answered on 20 Jun 2011:

This was originally done back in 2004. scientists took skin cells and turned them back into stem cells. (stem cells are the original cells with a non-specific function that can turn into any cell with a specific function given the correct environmnet). I’m not an expert in this feild so I can’t describe how they did it exactly but it required some very clever biology/biochemstry! Once they’d turned the skin cells into stem cells, they just changed the cells’ envorinment to one more suitable for nerve cells and voila… nerve cells [note that it is in no way this simple, but you get the idea!]

However, this year some scientists have turned skin cells into nerve cells without even making stem cells first. they did this by activating some genes inside the cells. Again I’m not clear on the detail but essnetially this changes the signals the cell recieves and it changes to match the new signal.

Sorry not to be able to explain in more detail, but I hope that helps…