One of the most defining scientific discoveries in recent decades is the development of induced pluripotent stem cells, which lets scientists revert adult cells back into an embryonic-like blank state and then manipulating them to become a particular kind of tissue.

But now a new model could do away with this time-consuming process, taking out the middle step and directly programming cells to become whatever we want them to be.

“Cells in our body always self-specialise,” explains bioinformatics researcher Indika Rajapakse from the University of Michigan.

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