Illustration of the Japanese physician and stem cell scientist Shinya Yamanaka (born 1962). Yamanaka is best known for developing induced pluripotent stems cell. These are formally mature differentiated cells that have been reprogrammed to revert to pluripotency (the ability to differentiate into any of the cell types of the body). Yamanaka discovered that inserting four genes that are active in embryonic stem cells into the nucleus of a mature skin cell would convert it to a pluripotent stem cell. Yamanaka was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with John Gurdon, for this work.