Adult stem cells: capturing youth from a bulge?

With the development of advanced cell-labeling technologies, fluorescence activated cell sorting (FACS), as well as improved understanding of mammalian gene expression, it is now possible to identify and isolate specific sub-populations of adult mammalian cells with good accuracy. Recent publications by Morris et al. and Tumbar et al. demonstrate the isolation of putative epithelial stem cells from the hair follicle bulge and Affymetrix expression arrays were employed to elucidate putative genes that might control stem cell fates.