And that is where Dr Yamanaka and Dr Yu may be able to help out.
Dr Yamanaka, then, has shown what is possible, but Dr Yu may have trumped him.
Dr Yamanaka used skin cells from the face, whereas Dr Yu plumped for ones from the foreskin.
That is because one of Dr Yamanaka's transcription factors, c-Myc, sometimes has the unfortunate side-effect of causing cancer.
Prof Yamanaka said it was a "tremendous honour" to be given the award.
BBC: Gurdon and Yamanaka share Nobel prize for stem cell work
Dr Yamanaka's team has, for instance, been able to persuade its stem cells to turn into nerve cells and heart cells.
The work by Yamanaka, Melton and Srivastava upended conventional thinking that cell development proceeds in one direction, moving step-by-step from primordial stem cells to fully differentiated adult cells.
Three other research groups at different institutions replicated Yamanaka's findings.
The main thing to be said against the methods used by Dr Yamanaka and Dr Yu is the way that they persuade their experimental cells to churn out the appropriate transcription factors.
The genetic approach to reprogramming, pioneered by Shinya Yamanaka who won the 2012 Nobel Prize in medicine for his work, allows human cells to be transformed back into an embryonic-like, pluripotent state.
FORBES: Scientist Shows How Small Molecules Generate Better Stem Cells
But as biologists have discovered in the past few years since iPSCs were first generated by Shinya Yamanaka in 2006, coaxing the cells to proliferate without acquiring mutations has proved to be a challenge.
FORBES: Aberrations Pose A Challenge for Reprogramming Stem Cells
Then came a breakthrough in 2007, when Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University succeeded in reprogramming adult skin cells back to their embryonic state simply by dousing them in a concoction of four genetic factors and some growth media.
On Monday, the 2012 prize for medicine or physiology was awarded to John Gurdon from the UK and Shinya Yamanaka from Japan for changing adult cells into stem cells, which can become any other type of cell in the body.
Opponents of embryonic stem cell research, which involves destroying the donated embryos from which cell lines are derived, have long argued that the discovery of iPS cells in 2006 (for which Shinya Yamanaka was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine this past year) obviates the need for embryonic stem cell research.
FORBES: Scientists Relieved As Supreme Court Passes Over Case Against Embryonic Stem Cell Research
In related news, researcher Shinya Yamanaka in Japan has turned mouse skin cells into cells that are indistinguishable from the embryonic kind--meaning, that they can conceivably be turned into heart cells, liver cells or just about any other kind of cell scientists want to study or, eventually, use as a therapy.
On Monday, the 2012 prize for medicine or physiology was awarded to John Gurdon from the UK and Shinya Yamanaka from Japan for changing adult cells into stem cells, and on Tuesday the prize for physics was awarded to Serge Haroche of France and David Wineland of the US for their work in querying single light and matter particles.
BBC: Chemistry Nobel goes to Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka
First came the remarkable work of Shinya Yamanaka at Kyoto University, who showed it was possible, by activating just four genes, to take a mature cell (he used a bit of skin but other cells would work) and turn it into the equivalent of an embryonic stem cell with the potential to become any other cell in the body of mouse or human.
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