News

Dr Alexandre de Mendoza visited the School of Biomedical Sciences, LKS Faculty of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong (HKUMed) as a Royal Society Kan Tong Po Fellow to expand his collaborative research with Associate Professor Dr Ralf Jauch. Recently, a collaboration between the two labs and the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology unearthed the ancient evolutionary origins of genes critical to stem cell biology, dating back over 700 million years. Drawing on insights from evolutionary processes, this discovery reveals that tools borrowed from ancient single-celled organisms—and even recreated proteins from life's earliest days—can transform mouse somatic cells into pluripotent stem cells capable of developing into any cell type in multicellular animals. This breakthrough challenges the longstanding belief that only animal genes possess this transformative ability, paving the way for new protein designs in novel therapies for regenerative medicine and disease studies to combat ageing and related health issues. The findings were recently published in Nature Communications.