Increase Height And Grow Taller Using Pluripotent Stem Cell Transdifferentiation

The idea I am proposing is something that I am quite sure scientists and researchers around the world have not been able to figure out yet. A guess is that it would take another 20 years of careful research before not only will scientists understand the molecular signaling and mechanisms which cause the process of transdifferentiation, but also how to control the process well enough to turn adult human cells that are completely differentiated into another type of cell.

I am proposing that it will be possible using pluripotent stem cells who are going through transdifferentiation to increase one’s height. First, we review what the process of “transdifferentiation” (source is Wikipedia) is…

“…is a process where one mature somatic cell transforms into another mature somatic cell without undergoing an intermediate pluripotent state or progenitor cell type. It is a type of metaplasia, which includes all cell fate switches, including the interconversion of stem cells. Current uses of transdifferentiation include disease modeling and drug discoveryand in the future may include gene therapy and regenerative medicine…”

I personally got extremely interested in transdifferentiation when I read about how the immortal hydra use this process to reverse in aging and stay biological immortal. I would write two older post about this idea.

The original article that started it all was “Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret of Immortality?” published in the New York Times back in November of 2012. It seems that this jellyfish, the Turritopsis nutricula is the only species we know of were the adult of the species can do transdifferentiation.

The usual way that most cells actually change from one type into another is to first dedifferentiate back into the progenitor stem cells which they were derived from. One they are de-differentiated, then they re-differentiate into the other types of cells. This is NOT transdifferentiation. In transdifferentiation, the step where it has to go back and then forward again is removed. The other way, where we induce the cells to go backwards, and then forwards again is known as pluripotent reprogramming, which has its own benefits, strengths, and weakness.

I would rather go for this endeavor, we use transdifferentiation because it allows for shifting for cells who have similar lineages, while for pluripotent reprogramming, the possible combinations which the progenitor cells can go into are limitless. We just want to focus on cartilage cells and bone cells.

Something I would like to point out is that recently I found that one can de-differentiate chondrocytes into fibroblast-like cells automatically and then re-differentiate them back into chondrocytes using the right type of structure, so the structure of the medium which encapsulates the cells can also determine what the cells will turn into.

The main method which transdifferentiation of the cells is possible in the laboratory is by doing something called “Lineage Instructive Approach”

From wikipedia, “In this approach transcription factors from progenitor cells of the target cell type are transfected into a somatic cell to induce transdifferentiation”

So it seems that we determine which types of cells we want to form, and also figure out which are the precursor progenitor cells which create this specific type of cell lineage. We take the transcription factors that are specific to the precursor cells and get them implanted into any type of cell found in the human body. This theoretically should get the overall cell to start to change its identity.

Implications For Height Increase Application

When one day we can induce cells in the adult human tissue like the cortical bone structure to change into chondrocytes, then we would have really developed a very unique idea on how to increase our height, in a very invasive approach. We might be able to just inject the right type of transcription factor to turn the cells that make the bones into the type of cells that make cartilage. With a simple injection, we develop cartilage tissue again where cortical bone was.

Indeed we would still need to possibly increase the osteoclast numbers to start to remove the hard bone matrix as well as inject a certain type of compound, probably thyroxine to get the chondrocytes that are newly formed to be in the right structural alignment.

However the hardest part in my opinion at this point in the research is that we will need to figure out how to change bone cells into cartilage cells in a stable way that won’t just de-differentiate back into bone cells again. Of course, the first step is to get transdifferentiation to be achieved, and that may take over a decade of real research.