Understanding and controlling differentiation of pluripotent cells

Pluripotent stem cells can transform into any of the cell types in our bodies. We know which signals to use to transform pluripotent cells grown in a dish into useful cells such as neurons or muscle cells. However pluripotent cells sometimes interpret these signals in unusual or unexpected ways. We think this is because the direction that each cell is facing (upwards or downwards) alters the way they respond to signals. We will test this by forcing pluripotent cells to all face the same direction to see if this improves our ability to reliably generate useful cell types from them.