The result was an utter shock to biologists—a Loma Prieta that shook the Earth plates of the stem cell world. I remember a senior chemical biologist from my department returning from a seminar in Toronto where Yamanaka had just presented his data visibly ruffled, breathless with disbelief. “I just cannot believe it,” he told me after he’d returned from the talk. “But the result has been reproduced over and over again. It’s got to be true.” Yamanaka had made a stem cell out of a fibroblast—a transition thought to be impossible in biology. It was as if—presto!—he had turned biological time
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