Turning Urine Samples into Brain Cells: This new technique of reprogramming ordinary cells present in urine into immature brain cells that can form multiple types of functioning neurons and glial cells was developed by Chinese researchers in China, and was published in the scientific journal Nature Methods in December 2012. Instead of using retrovirus, they used vectors which the researchers say is a breakthrough[558] This does not involve embryonic stem cells which come with serious drawbacks when transplanted, such as the risk of developing tumours. This technique makes the procedure of generating Induced pluripotent stem cells far easier and non-invasive, as the cells can be obtained from a urine sample instead of a blood sample or biopsy. This research proves human excreta could be a powerful source of cells to study disease, bypassing some of the problems of using stem cells, and could be useful for research studying the cellular mechanisms of neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and for testing the effects of new drugs that are being developed to treat them.
Turning urine into brain cells | Mo Costandi | Science | theguardian.com (http://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2012/dec/09/turning-urine-into-brain-cells)
I guess Jesus turning water into wine isn't that cool anymore cause now you can turn piss into stem cells.
MIKEHAWK
Your link is to an article on theguardian that is a blog. It is a very long article based on the original posts:
Generation of integration-free neural progenitor cells from cells in human urine : Nature Methods : Nature Publishing Group (http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v10/n1/abs/nmeth.2283.html)
GEO Accession viewer (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE36395)
Both very short and much less information and somehow different.
I don't know from where theguardian article writer got all the conclusions.
James