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ONE of the hottest races in biology, the hunt for the chemicals that reset a cell’s identity, just got hotter. Researchers have discovered that frog eggs seem to make the nucleus of an adult human cell revert to a state like that of an embryonic stem cell.

Since frog eggs are easy to obtain and work with, the finding should give the search for these mystery molecules a huge boost. And if they can be identified and exploited, the possibilities are immense. Doctors, for example, might be able to take any kind of cell from a patient and transform it…

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