Lets say you take some kind of cells that divide fast like white blood cells and change their epigenome to resemble some other kind of cells, muscle cells for example.

 

What happens?

Actually it is possible..

https://www.google.com/search?q=cell+converting+back+to+stem+cell

"Johns Hopkins Researchers Return Blood Cells to Stem Cell State. Johns Hopkins scientists have developed a reliable method to turn the clock back on blood cells, restoring them to a primitive stem cell state from which they can then develop into any other type of cell in the body. The work, described in the Aug.Aug 21, 2012"

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/johns_hopkins_researchers_return_blood_cells_to_stem_cell_state

 

1 hour ago, Hans de Vries said:

What happens?

Primitive religious fanatical priests will stop complaining that human embryos are used to get stem cells.. ?

(Every day, men's seeds, and every month women's eggs end up in toilets and trashcans inside of sanitary napkin, tampons etc. ... being used to save someone's life is a better solution than trashcan)

https://www.google.com/search?q=embryonic+stem+cells

"Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) are stem cells derived from the undifferentiated inner mass cells of a human embryo. Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent, meaning they are able to grow (i.e. differentiate) into all derivatives of the three primary germ layers: ectoderm, endoderm and mesoderm."

 

But if you change gene expression of white blood cells to resemble the gene expression of muscle cells, will you literally get muscle floating in your blood?

This is a form of transdifferentiation and is not proven to work before it is revert back to the stem cell state.

Normally to get muscle cell from white blood cell you would go.

white blood cell->stem cell->muscle cell

Transdifferentiation however, is more of a myth, not to let you down but I have not find anything about transdifferentiation in mammals besides eye retina cells.

Edited July 12, 20205 yr by fredreload