Japanese researchers who devised a method for turning human skin cells into cells that closely resemble embryonic stem cells have modified their formula so that it no longer involves the cancer-causing gene c-Myc. The new method is less efficient, but it does produce induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University and colleagues reported Friday in Nature Biotechnology. Researchers injected the cells into 26 mice; none of the animals died of tumors. By contrast, six of the 37 mice injected with iPS cells derived with c-Myc succumbed to tumors during the study. ‘Teen galaxies’ are discovered Young galaxies, so faint that scientists struggled to prove they were there, have been discovered by aiming two of the world’s most powerful telescopes at a single patch of sky for nearly 100 hours. An international research team has identified 27 pre-galactic fragments, ‘teenager galaxies,’ which they hope will help astronomers understand how our own Milky Way reached adulthood. The telescopes allowed scientists to see back 11 billion years or more, to 2 billion years after the Big Bang. The clusters make a compelling case for the theory that galaxies formed bit by bit instead […]