A feat of biological alchemy that offers scientists the hope of growing replacement organs from patients’ own skin cells has been named the scientific breakthrough of the year.

Cellular reprogramming allows scientists to rewind the developmental clock of adult cells to produce stem cells, which can then be grown into completely different tissues, such as neurons and beating heart cells.

The technique is already being used to gain unprecedented insights into debilitating and incurable diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, but ultimately scientists hope they will be able to treat patients by reprogramming their cells to make healthy replacement tissues and organs.

The discovery leads a top ten of major advances announced by the prestigious US journal Science.

Second place on the list of breakthroughs was awarded for the first direct observation of a planet beyond our own solar system. Scientists first confirmed that there were worlds orbiting other stars in the 1980s, though they did so indirectly. The majority of the more than 300 “extrasolar planets” now known were spotted by watching the tiny wobble in stars’ position as enormous, Jupiter-sized planets swung around them.

This year, scientists announced that they had seen shimmers of light from the planets themselves. They are just faint pinpricks of light in space, but they will give astronomers clues to what those distant planets are made of and how they formed.

The remaining eight breakthroughs are not ranked in any particular order but cover the breadth of science from the genetics of cancer and renewable sources of energy, to an unprecedented understanding of “good fat”, and a way of calculating the mass of the universe.

No cure yet for pigheadedness, morosite, bigotry and worst of all – “it was good enough for my dad!”