From the article:
By using a combination of RNA modifications and a soluble interferon inhibitor to overcome innate antiviral responses, we have developed a technology that enables highly efficient re- programming of somatic cells to pluripotency and can also be harnessed to direct the differentiation of pluripotent cells toward a desired lineage. Although it is relatively technically complex, the methodology described here offers several key advantages over established reprogramming techniques. By obviating the need to perform experiments under the stringent biological containment required for virus-based approaches, modified RNA technology should make reprogramming accessible to a wider community of researchers. More fundamentally, because our technology is RNA based, it completely eliminates the risk of genomic integration and insertional mutagenesis inherent to all DNA-based methodologies,
including those that are ostensibly nonintegrating.
I'm simultaneously trying to RTFA and look at the comments here, but it looks like a very nice paper at first glance. The technique itself is elegant: modify messenger RNA to make it less likely to be destroyed by cellular defenses, then pump a bunch of it into the cell to induce the production of the proteins of interest.
The earlier techniques, published about 4 years ago by Takahashi and Yamanaka (doi:10.1016/j.cell.2006.07.024), depended on using viruses to insert genes for 4 factors (Oct3/4, Sox2, c-Myc, and Klf4), and then letting the cell transcribe those genes and make the proteins. This has some dangers, as you're inserting stuff into the genome, and you can never precisely control where it goes.
In contrast, Warren and colleagues cut out the middleman by sending in mRNA for those four factors, and just letting that get translated. No viruses, no risk of borking the cells' DNA, and fairly precise and efficient control of the expression levels.
Disclaimer: I'm not a lab scientist, but I am working in RNA bioinformatics, and it certainly smells like a real breakthrough. My toddler is running around, and I'm happy for her, for me, and potentially my parents (assuming the technique pans out and depending how quickly it can be translated into therapies.)
I (heart) science.
That does sell them a bit short; I'm reading the paper right now, and their technique is quite elegant, and will I think be widely applicable. It's definitely superior to the virally-inserted gene approach in terms of safety and efficiency.
The first is more of a hardware hack; this is more like reprogramming the firmware.
"I can't come to work today, my embedded system has a strain of H1N1.malware@cortex."
One of the main characteristics of the game 'Aviator' on SunOS (developed by Bruce Factor and future nVIDIA co-founder Curtis Priem) was that the protocol was designed such that mutiple client computers all had a consistent view of the shared flight space, with no central authority. There was a white paper on the protocol that made very interesting reading (back in 1990), I wonder if any copies are floating around somewhere? You can still find references to the protocol out there (look for RFC1340 and the IPv6 mulicast assignments doc: RFC 2375.)
I have fond memories of playing Aviator at Sun -- my favorite was the X-29.
Actually, I'm getting terrible graphical artifacts when scrolling in Safari 4 5528.17. I've also seen the white-on-white titles.
These folks seem like trollity-troll-trolls.
Only through hard work and perseverance can one truly suffer.