Monday, January 20, 2003

Stem cells migrate from bone to brain. The most interesting aspect of this amazing story is how stem cells seem to behave as universal cells, ready to be programmed by their environment to produce appropriate specialized cells. I wonder if looking for individual signals will yield the answer, though. Programming a stem cell may require a sequence of steps involving responses from the stem cell or its offspring. Individual steps may be relatively uninformative. Compare the boot sequence for a particular operating system on generic hardware. 5:57:12 PM