Yamanaka, Shinya (1962-…), a Japanese biologist, was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. He shared the prize with the British biologist Sir John B. Gurdon. The two scientists won for discoveries concerning how adult cells can be transformed into stem cells. A stem cell has the ability to develop into any of the various kinds of cell that make up the tissues and organs of the body (see Stem cell ). Living organisms develop from stem cells.
Early in development, an embryo (developing animal or plant) consists of a hollow ball of stem cells called a blastocyst. The stem cells are called pluripotent stem cells. They develop into all of the various cell types that make up mature tissues and organs through a process called differentiation. Scientists thought that once differentiation occurred, the cells could no longer return to the pluripotent state.
In 2006, Yamanaka altered certain genes in the skin cells of an adult mouse. The alteration caused the skin cells to transform into pluripotent stem cells. Turning adult cells into stem cells could eliminate the need for controversial medical therapies that rely on human stem cells obtained from embryos. The embryos are destroyed in the process of isolating the stem cells. Many people consider it wrong to destroy human embryos.
Shinya Yamanaka was born on Sept. 4, 1962 in Osaka, Japan. He studied medicine at Kobe University, earning his M.D. degree in 1987. He earned a Ph.D. degree from Osaka City University in 1993. He conducted research at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease in San Francisco from 1993 to 1996. From 1996 to 1999, he held a position at Osaka City University Medical School. In 1999, he became a professor at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology in Japan. In 2004, he became a professor at Kyoto University.
See also Gurdon, Sir John Bertrand .
