TEAM RESEARCHER ASKS FOR PAPER TO BE WITHDRAWN DUE TO LACK OF REPRODUCIBILITY. Breakthrough findings by Dr. Haruko Obokata (image) and colleagues at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology (CDB) in Japan look to upset the canonical views on the fundamental definitions of cellular differentiation and pluripotency. In a pair of reports published online on January 29, 2014 in Nature, Dr. Obokata shows that ordinary somatic cells from newborn mice can be stripped of their differentiation memory, reverting to a state of pluripotency in many ways resembling that seen in embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). The conversion process, which Obokata has named STAP (stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency), requires only that the cells be shocked with a dose of sublethal stress, such as low pH or mechanical force, in order to trigger a remarkable transformation, in which the cells shrink, lose the functional characteristics specific to their somatic cell type, and enter a state of stem cell-like pluripotency. Such STAP cells show all the hallmarks of pluripotency, and contribute to chimeric mice and germline transmission when injected into early stage embryos. Even more interestingly, STAP cells show a level of plasticity that exceeds that even of ESCs and iPSCs, in that they can give rise to cells of both embryonic and extraembryonic lineages; other pluripotent stem cells typically only generate embryonic lineage cells. STAP cells also differ from stem cells in their lower ability to proliferate in culture, but Dr.Login Or Register To Read Full Story