Tiziana A. L. Brevini · Georgia Pennarossa
2013
Science is evolving at an immense speed. Breakthroughs, which most of us had never even thought of few years ago because they clashed against cemented dogmas, are now realities. They now pave the way for further scientific endeavors and offer new solutions to important societal problems. In the area of biology, some of the greatest breakthroughs over the past years have been the birth of the cloned sheep, Dolly, in 1996, and the finding just 10 years later in 2006 that differentiated somatic cells can be reprogrammed and revert to a pluripotent stem cell state. The two achievements have commonalities: Both have demolished the biological dogma that terminally differentiated cells cannot de-differentiate, both are based upon a total reprogramming of the epigenetic control of cellular gene expression, and both have their roots in embryology.