21/03/2022
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2012 was awarded jointly to
1. Sir John B. Gurdon
2. Shinya Yamanaka
"for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent."
Because I love cell biology let me explain small..😆😆
Basic definitions:
1. Cell- basic structural and functional unit of an organism.
2. Pluripotent- (of an immature cell or stem cell) capable of giving rise to several different cell types.
John B. Gordon discovered in 1962 that specialisation of cells is reversible. ( Embryo is made up of pluripotent cells which can develop to either muscle cells, nerve cells, blood cells, liver cells e.t.c. these are also called specialized cells and they form the adult organism)
Previously the journey from "pluripotent" to "specialized" was considered unidirectional.
The procedure;
1. Using a fertilized egg of a frog.
2. He replaced the immature cell nucleus of the egg with the nucleus from a mature intestinal cell.
3. The modified egg developed into a normal (cloned) tadpole.
4. The procedure was possible became the "DNA" of the mature intestinal cell had all the information needed to develop all cells in the frog.
