Getting to the heart of the matter: direct reprogramming to cardiomyocytes

Since MyoD was used to convert fibroblasts directly to skeletal muscle, biologists have tried to apply this strategy to generate other cell lineages. In their recent Cell paper, Ieda et al. (2010) use selected cardiac transcription factors to directly reprogram fibroblasts to cardiomyocytes without passing through an intervening pluripotent state.