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Stem Cells Generated From Adult Cells
DrJay writes "Scientist report that introducing only four genes to adult cells is sufficient to convert them to something that looks and acts remarkably like an embryonic stem cell. Although some of the details need to be worked out, if this technique is generally applicable, it may allow the production of an essentially unlimited supply of stem cells. There is a subscription-only report, and Ars Technica's science journal describes the results in some detail for those without subscriptions."
What about the rights of the innocent human cells killed in this process? Have these scientists no moral fiber whatsoever?
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I can finally grow myself a twin!
Oh wait, I already am one.
Quads it is then...
Summation 2
Didn't "Star Trek" have an episode about a guy who had this condition?
Where were you when the voynix came?
Once we can take a patient's blood and make stem cells that are a perfect match for their tissue type, the whole fetal stem cell issue will be irrelevant. As it largely is already for those who look at where the field is REALLY moving.
I'll get my coat.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
So if you're a mouse, we have so many cures for you. We even have cures for most cancers. Wake me up when scientists figure out how to do this with human cells.
This will help kill some of the controversy if it actually works, but many in America still have an irrational fear of sciences that they do not, and can not, understand. People can understand that taking a pill makes you better even if they do not understand the "how" of the pill. They can understand that cutting into your leg to repair a bone with metal rods makes sense. Very few people, however, understand how stem cells may help medical science. Without helping them understand (politicians included), we still have a long way to go before the public openly accepts stem cell research and is comfortable in pumping large amounts of tax money into the research system.
Will this lead to our eventual ability to grow brainless human meat in vats, the most ethical meat we can cook up?
Or they could be adopted.
Please! You dont just 'throw them out', that is bad. You have to totally incinerate them. Good thing nobody is using them for science though thanks to the friendly Govt.
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but.. but.. but.. that cell can turn into a living breathing human being.
Timang tinggi tinggi
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How about someone adopt the thousands of kids who are already living and breathing before we go and create more kids.
How about instead of people going to China and Peru to adopt kids, they adopt the ones that are here in this country.
How many kids have you adopted? Until you've adopted at least one, you have no basis to tell women what they can and can't do with their own bodies or prevent them from destroying their own eggs.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Life begins at ovum, illegalize menstruation!!!
See you can't even READ about it unless you've got money... so it starts...
You're nothing; like me.
Where did you get that info? The government just isn't providing any funding.
But won't the bodies start to stack up fast? I mean, there are only so many hobos that one can kill for their stem cells. They could fit like 1000 embreyos in one Tupperware bowl. Now they will have to have an entire U-Haul truck rented to store all the hobo corpses.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
"Where did you get that info? The government just isn't providing any funding."
It's just another version of the argument "The government not bothering to fund it = the government banning it". The argument has been used for years to portray the reduction in the funding of "official government art" as a draconian effort to censor things.
Where were you when the voynix came?
The main problem with stem cell research (in the US, mostly) is the moral dimension. This method removes that, and may allow stem cell research to move ahead in the US, although it may be too late. Other countries are less concerned with the moral implications of embryonic stem cells (I believe The Economist had an article about stem cell research in Singapore recently) and are ahead of the US as a result. Can the US catch up fast enough using this method?
There is also the possibility that any stem cell research will be very limited in the US for some time to come, regardless of the method. This is due to the current administration's attitude towards stem cell research, although the attitude may shift with a new administration in '08.
All I know is that this is gonna be used by the religious fr^H^H supporters to say "Aha ! We told you that killing embryos was wrong ! All we needed to do is to give this problem a little bit more thought ... Countless embryos have now been saved from your murderous hands !"
Well if the news turns out to be true, then they'd be right :(...
Slow down there. Did you read the link? I am not telling any woman what to do. The website promotes adoption of embryos as a way for infertile couples to still have a child that the woman gave birth to. I agree that there are babies that are already born that need adoption. This is not meant to take the place of that. This is for couples who only wish to have a baby if they can give birth to it themselves.
The pie-in-the-sky type of results that people expect from stem cells may only be possible if we can produce these things in mass. This type of research may be the real key to viable stem cell treatments. If you want to grow back another limb, the only way to get enough genetic material is if your own body provides it.
It would be very ironic if the fear of stem cell research is what yields its ultimate success.
Sorry, wasn't directed at you personally. Just a general remark when I hear the pro-life folks talk about adoption yet are unwilling to adopt any themselves.
I have a cousin who went to Peru with his wife to adopt a girl. While that's all fine and dandy, they could have taken the money they spent going down there and back, plus other related costs, and adopted a kid in this country.
I'm not one of those 'America first' folks. I just think it's ludicrous to go elsewhere to adopt when there are thousands here who need adoption. Is it harder here than elsewhere? From what I've heard, yes. But considering what you'll be undertaking, it's a necessary evil.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Your body is made of lots of little parts. Most of your parts are screwed up. These can help make new parts to replace those broken parts. Any questions?
I have nothing to say.
Nothing will kill the controvercy around stem cells. If we found a way to turn post-consumer styrofoam into stems cells, while whitening teeth and curing cancer at the same time, the religious groups would still scream about it.
It's not about stem cells, see? Or rather, it is but it's not how they're obtained...That's just a nice straw man that they've been holding up (Your godless science is eating our unborn babies!).
What they're really scared of is all the stuff that they see stem cells leading to. Build a new kidney, fine. Does that kidney have a soul? Why not build a whole new, soulless, person? It's a whole new bio-medical can of worms, and it scares the hell out of them.
Fortunately, most people are in favor of stem cell research, so it's unlikely the fundies will be able to halt it forever.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
That is not true at all. The government does not have a ban on embryonic stem cell research. It just has a ban on using federal funding for it. In fact California is already funding such research.
My wife and I have taken this one step further. We are looking into adopting an older child instead of an infant. The last thing I want to have happen is let some child grow up as a ward of the system. That is no way to grow up.
Hopefully I'll be more succesful in the future and we will be able to adopt more than older child.
But the key test came when they labeled these ESCs with a fluorescent tag and injected then into recently fertilized mouse embryos at a time when the embryos were a small cluster of cells. The progeny of the engineered ESCs glowed green, and were found in every tissue in these embryos as they developed, as well as throughout adults. There seems to be little that's different between regular ESCs and the engineered ESCs.
How is it that so often scientific biological breakthroughs are accomplished by making something glow green?
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
The ethical implications are not only in the possibility for destroying life; but what if some sort of virus mutated and made people immortal? I mean, look at fantasy literature and plenty of vampire fiction to realize that the quest for the cure to these diseases may inadvertently open a pandora's box. And this is not simply a dooms-day idea; what really would happen to our society if we managed to "solve" aging or death?
- The solution is simply finding the right question, and asking it iteratively until the answer is obvious as it is simp
I might be wrong, but would not the telomere be of way different length, shorter in the adult cell transformed into embryo cell, and a real embryo cell ? Meaning if (fiction speaking here) you grew an organ out of it, it would anyway be as old as you are right now ?
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This is great news if it pans out, but still, I'm going to have to do a lot of gritting-of-teeth to ignore the crowing from the pro-life crowd who are so, so happy about Sam Brownback's Amazing Dancin' Embryos being, um, kept alive until they get incinerated along with the rest of the medical waste.
I'm all for whatever it takes to get nifty medical research going on, but that part's going to give me a goddamned headache.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Wicked, I had no idea Scientist could do this kind of stuff. And he's a great musician.
Strange though that he doesn't mention this kind of research on his myspace page.
Well until you've been an aborted baby you have right to say what happens to a baby.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
I know people that adopted ouf of country because they wanted a baby (nearly imposiable in the US) - it was alot cheaper - and they don't have to worrie about having the parents come back years later and try and take them away because the court system will let them.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
AAAAAhhhhhhhrrrgggghhhhh....
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
"If Star Trek had had stem cells, they may have been able to give Jordi true-color vision"
I think the real reason had to do with a copyright dispute with Intel over some of the advanded rendering algorithms in the VISOR.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Yeah, now we're using ground up people.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
In the normal scheme of science and engineering, you often have to meet requirements that you don't fully understand or even agree with. Meeting such requirements is rarely seen as admitting they were correct, think of it more as eliminating another hurdle.
I really hope this works.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Most "right-to-lifers" give the impression that they view the moment of fertilization (and henceforth it's an embryo) as having potential for full development into a human being. So don't give someone the opportunity to dismiss your argument because of (ab)use of terminology.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
And it is the arrogance of transhumanism that believes we should and can control our changes... And I'm not arguing from a moral/religious/fundamentalist perspective, but that "gods" may not be such a desirable goal to become...
- The solution is simply finding the right question, and asking it iteratively until the answer is obvious as it is simp
Didn't "Star Trek" have an episode about a guy who had this condition?
;-D
No, that was Mork & Mindy.
Transhumanist is simply someone who advocates transhumanism. Transhumanism; an intellectual and cultural movement supporting the use of new sciences and technologies to enhance human capacities and improve the human condition. Transhuman would be a human more evolved than other humans. (Thanks to Wikipedia.org) I don't find Trahshumanism to be arrogant in any way. Someone claiming to be a Transhuman, however, would have to be one arrogant prick.
If we are speaking about embryo's then we ARE speaking about kids that have already been created.
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I find it amazing that many of the comments here are relatively negative in tone-- that people are still more interested in grousing about the religious right and their ridiculous ethics than they are in celebrating (however cautiously) an advance that may make it possible to reap the benefits of stem-cell research without compromising morals or sacrificing what some consider to be human lives.
This development might offer a way for both sides to win. Should we really be feeling disheartened about that, like "Ugh, what if embryonic stem cells really aren't necessary, and they turn out to have been right all along?"? My impression was that supporting stem cell research was about being pro-science, not anti-religion.
What you mean, is someone who claims to be Posthuman. Transhuman is a person who's lifestyle is in someway on the road to becoming posthuman. My response to the arrogance of transhumanism is in the idea that there should be a posthuman, or that we can direct our own evolution... Which, whether openly expressed or not, is the end-all goal of Transhumanism. To put a person's genetic code, evolution and otherwise the rest of the non-posthuman world (via enhanced mental capacity through which the malicious could manipulate, control, or rule... well, scratch that, its already being done... but at least Bush is no mental giant...) under their will or control...
- The solution is simply finding the right question, and asking it iteratively until the answer is obvious as it is simp
or any other time, really. There's no valid scientific definition of life and death.
This is what the stem cell debate is all about, really. Religious people feel that life is a holy, special thing, and that human beings are unique due to divine will.
If a guy in a lab coat can take cells from inside my body and grow a new person, what makes me special? Life becomes just a mechanical process, a loose description for a certain type of interaction between atoms.
I knew someone whose parents had tried to abort them (and would remind them of it) -- definitely not the happiest of situations to be in.
Mice share around 92% of their DNA code with humans, and much of that is realted to shared functions...
Why should nature re-invent the wheel?
Something that works in mice is likely to work in humans as well.
What kind of a douchebag marked the parent Flamebait?
A posthuman or post-human is a hypothetical future being whose capabilities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no longer human by current standards (Anyone who would claim to be one would be stupid - not simply arrogant). It is a common error for social commentators to say that transhumanists claim to be transhuman; Adopting a philosophy which says that someday everyone ought to have the opportunity to become transhuman is not to claim that one is currently better or "more evolved" than one's fellow humans. Human = well...everyone. Transhuman = Human+Enhancements. Posthuman = Not Human Anymore - totally different, but has decended from humans. No disrespect - but I wrote exactly what I meant to wright. The political commentary doesn't really fit, but I know where you're coming from. Bush is kind of a weenie and he's a bit embrassing (I voted for him because McCain dropped out). But I can't regret my decision - Kerry and Gore are embrassments to the human race while Libertarians and Populists seem to be completely cracked in the head though all sides may spout something generally similar to a rational though from time to time. Money is what its all about. I don't have any, but I'm trying to change that daily.
Now I don't like answering my own post.. never mind the replies or moderation.
and in 2 or 3 years of being a sldotter.. these is my first time to do it.
I WAS MAKING A JOKE>JOKE. JOke.
Timang tinggi tinggi
parang sudah asah
alang alang mandi
biar sampai basah
Why is it considered subscription only when the PDF file is there and completely viewable?
Using quotes around the titles of television programs (radio programs, songs, articles featured in a larger collection, etc.) is a standard style, like using italics or underlining the titles of books, movies, albums and other complete works. However, since Star Trek was a television series, style guides often suggest the use of italics, while the title of a particular episode would use quotes (e.g., "Arena").
Can the US catch up fast enough using this method?
:D
It was your voters that RE-elected the fundamentalists. Now its time to reap what you sow.
Actually I have been working on a theory. The whole world knows about the legendary corruption of US politicians. So I asked myself, why oh why don't foreign governments just make like a corporation and buy the politicans that would make as much of a mess as possible out of the US?
Then I thought, hey maybe they already have! Massive debt, unneccesary wars, religious wing nuts tearing apart your academic foundations with bread-and-circus debates, erosion of civil liberties... Hell if I was a hostile power or even just a power with nothing to do this decade, I couldn't have done a better job on the US myself!
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
I think if you read more carefully you'll see that you actually agree with the guy you're disagreeing with.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
That's not only cannibalism, that's incest!
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Good thing nobody is using them for science though thanks to the friendly Govt.
Hint: you don't know what you're talking about. At all. There's lots of ESC research going on in the United States.
From Cell:
> Differentiated cells can be reprogrammed to an embryonic-like state by transfer of
> nuclear contents into oocytes or by fusion with embryonic stem (ES) cells. Little is
> known about factors that induce this reprogramming. Here, we demonstrate induction of
> pluripotent stem cells from mouse embryonic or adult fibroblasts by introducing four
> factors, Oct3/4, Sox2, c-Myc, and Klf4, under ES cell culture conditions. Unexpectedly,
> Nanog was dispensable. These cells, which we designated iPS (induced pluripotent stem)
> cells, exhibit the morphology and growth properties of ES cells and express ES cell
> marker genes. Subcutaneous transplantation of iPS cells into nude mice resulted in tumors
> containing a variety of tissues from all three germ layers. Following injection into
> blastocysts, iPS cells contributed to mouse embryonic development. These data demonstrate > that pluripotent stem cells can be directly generated from fibroblast cultures by the
> addition of only a few defined factors.
Funny, I was looking at the Young lab's results from Nanog/Oct4/Sox2 co-occupation of transcription factor binding sites (these genes appeared to control self-renewal in pluripotent stem cells) and thinking, "Why hasn't anyone tried this?"
Looks like they had... the paper was probably under review when Young et al. published theirs. I was surprised that Nanog was unnecessary for self-renewal; the belief had been that it was *THE* crucial gene regulating the others. Apparently not.
It will be interesting to see whether descendents of these adult-derived pluripotent cells exhibit the same bizarre "accelerated aging" as embryonic nuclear transplants (eg. Dolly) due to what seems to be patterns of DNA methylation. If they have found away around that problem I will be very impressed; the derived cell lines really would be just like embryonic lines in all respects. We shall see, and I'm sure with all this excitement, we'll see very soon if that's the case.
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
I think if you take a computer apart into ICs, take the ICs apart into transistors, take those apart into molecules, and those to atoms, you'll never find anything you could call a "program" that couldn't also be called, "physics."
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
It takes a lot more than being an embryo to become a kid. About 9 months more and a womb, unless someone cares to correct me...
Dude, you need to start listening to something *other* than Cannibal Corpse.
The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. -Anais Nin
Most people assume that any discussion of stem cells refers to embryonic stem cells. The fact is that adult stem cells can be harvested from several parts of your body, such as your bone marrow and the nasal epithelium. These cells have the advantage of being a perfect genetic match to the recipient.
What's even less well known is that adult stem cells have already been used successfully to treat a number of conditions in humans, including spinal cord injuries! Meanwhile, embryonic stem cells have been used to treat exactly zero humans.
The big pharma and biotech companies already know this. That's why they are spending their research money on adult stem cell research and not the embryonic kind. The researchers complaining about the lack of government funds are all academics who rely on federal grants for their jobs. Embryonic stem cell research, like AIDS research, has such an incredibly far away success horizon that it is great for making a research career out of.
These findings don't lessen the value of embryo stem cell research at all. It means that therapies developed using embryo cell research could be switched to using this technology once it came of age. This is a great result that shows it is possible to create stem cells from adults that behave like embryonic stem cells, but this isn't near being ready yet for practical purposes. It will likely take several years to find proper methods of controlling the genes involved. That still means years of falling behind and research on therapies and, therefore, many people dying.
Bush's stance is stupid and hypocritical. If you actually cared about the embryos wouldn't you prevent them from being created in the first place? Embryos were not going to be created for stem cell research. Unwanted embryos were going to be used find ways to cure diseases instead of being incinerated.
Morally superior christian view:
Embryos incinerated alive.
The sick suffer and die. Just like God intended. Ahmen.
Unscrupulous pragmatic view (likely promoted by ungodly evolutionists!):
Embryos die advancing research and are incinerated, or live on in others, curing disease.
The sick may be cured.
Sorry, started ranting. Religous fundementalism (of all kinds) terrifies and irritates me.
Until you have seen babies with the horrible disorders that will cripple them for the rest of their lives and make their lives worse than if they were aborted you have no right to say what happens to a baby.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.