Methods relating to pluripotent cells

Isolated cells expressing one or more markers of pluripotency formed by treating non-embryonic, non-transformed normal differentiated mammalian somatic cells with an effective amount of chemical stress comprising ATP to a concentration of between 20 μM and 200 mM, alone or in combination with a mechanical stress to increase the levels of stress inducible genes in an amount and for a time effective to increase the number of cells expressing one or more markers of pluripotency, wherein the cells are at a pH of between 3.0 and 6.8,

• without introduction of an exogenous gene, a transcript, a protein, a nuclear component or cytoplasm, or without cell fusion,
• wherein the one or more pluripotency markers are selected from the group consisting of Oct4, SSEA, Nanog and Sox2, thereby increasing the number of cells expressing the markers of pluripotency,
• wherein the cells are in tissue specific cell culture media.