Pluripotent stem cells—which have the potential to mature into any cell in the body—are being widely studied for their role in treating a vast array of human diseases and for generating cells and tissues for transplantation. The test to see whether a cell line is pluripotent can take up to eight weeks and requires animal testing.

Jeanne Loring and co-workers, Scripps Research Institute, USA, have developed a new diagnostic test, PluriTest, which uses microarray technology. This enables the simultaneous analysis of thousands of different DNA sequences. Users can upload raw data from a microarray analysis to the PluriTest website. Comparison with a database created by the team, which contains molecular models of normal human embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells, identifies whether a cell line is pluripotent in 10 minutes.

• A bioinformatic assay for pluripotency in human cells
  F.-J. Müller, B. M. Schuldt, R. Williams, D. Mason, G. Altun et al.,
  Nat. Methods 2011.
  DOI: 10.1038/nmeth.1580