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Stem Cell Fraudster May Have Actually Made Breakthrough
Otter writes "Woo Suk Hwang's career swung from fame over his lab's claim of the first stem cells from a cloned human embryo to humiliation when the results were found to be fake. Research at Harvard on Hwang's cells has found that they are actually parthenogenic lines derived from eggs -- perhaps a more important and difficult achievement than what he had been claiming! 'Researchers said that the distinct "genetic fingerprint" of the stem cells means they may be the first in the world to be extracted from embryos produced by the so-called "virgin birth" method, or parthenogenesis. This happens when eggs are stimulated into becoming embryos without ever being fertilised by sperm, and has been achieved in animals. However, before Hwang, no one had managed to produce a human embryo using parthenogenesis which lived long enough to allow the extraction of viable stem cells.'"
Link to the paper. I submitted this as a story and didn't want to bomb Cell's servers if it hit the main page...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Is there a way to derive them other than using eggs?
Do they occur naturally somewhere?
Why is this more important than stem cells from a cloned human embryo?
Why was that important?
Ethicists are satisfied if the destroyed embryo is a cloned one?
I managed to achieve cold fusion while cooking my breakfast in the microwave this morning.
This has been done Once before in history... :)
Rule of Acquisition #19: Satisfaction is Not guaranteed.
I, for one, welcome our new zygotless overlords!
Grundes!
The whole lying about the accomplishment aside, I've always said that even if you don't find what you're looking for, humanity is better off for knowing all the other ways of not accomplishing that task vs. no research done at all.
An I.T. motto in the hands of an idiot is a dangerous thing...
This gives a whole new meaning to "You should've seen the one that goy away"!
I mean, could it be that he was not voluntarily trying to scam everybody, but just misinterpreted his results? This is great stuff if it is true!
Stem Cell Fraudster May Have Actually Made Breakthrough
cl-0wned!
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
have egg on their face now?
Cruelest...Parents...Evar
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
Soon they will not need men to reproduce, and will begin eliminating us.
Then all those parallel parking spaces across the world will fall into disuse....wasted real estate....
FTFA:...from embryos produced by the so-called "virgin birth" method, or parthenogenesis.
That's right - Jesus! The Bible is right. The word of God has scientific proof! Yeaaaaassss, praise Jesus!
I see the liiiiight! Aaaaaammmmayyyahen!
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
may be the first in the world to be extracted from embryos produced by the so-called "virgin birth" method, or parthenogenesis.
Is this another Jesus? I thought those xtians were a little freaky, but could they have been right all along?
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
There's a joke in there, but I just can't put my finger on it...
This was covered yesterday on NPR Radio.
All of us know, long time ago, in a galaxy far away, the mitochloreans engineered a parthenogenic birth in Tattoonie.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
So, could the original claim of cloning been simply a translation error rather than fraud?
"Um. Yeah. Well... I planned that. It's a feature."
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
So now women can make babies without us *and* do math? I think it's safe to say that this is a bad news day for men everywhere.
Disclaimer: I'm no scientist, and I only skimmed the paper, but I have an interest in genetics and an interest in seeing this better covered than the mass media is doing. Corrections most welcome.
I'm shooting for the non-geneticist version:
Basic Version:
a normal human cell has 2 copies of 22 non-sex chromosomes, and 2 sex chromosomes. The "copies" are almost certainly NOT identical to one another, but basically similar. These cells are "diploid" (having 2 of each chromosome) and are considered "somatic cells".
During normal reproduction, each person will contribute a "germline cell", an ova or a sperm, in which only 1 copy of each chromosome exists ("haploid"). These germline cells merge to create a "zygote" (which is diploid), which eventually becomes an embryo.
Parthenogenetic reproduction takes a germline cell, and duplicates the genetic material, making a diploid out of a haploid. Such replication happens with normal cells during the process of cell division ("mitosis"), so the real trick is (1) convincing the cell to do this duplication outside the cell division process and (2) convincing the cell that it is no longer a differentiated (specialized) cell, but instead a stem cell.
One interesting result here is that the parthenogenetic cell is NOT a clone of the parent cell - it will have two copies each of ONE of the copies of each chromosome from the parent, determined effectively at random. In some ways this means a parthenogenetic stem cell is less valuable than a cloned stem cell - it will not be a 100% match, though it will not contain any DNA foreign to the donor. In other ways it opens up all sorts of new areas of study.
One particular result is that it opens the opportunity for recessives to be studied. (Chromosomes have genes, each that code various proteins that run the bodies mechanics. Most people will therefore have two copies of every gene (having two copies of the chromosomes). Those genes may not be identical. Some genes only have their effects seen ("express") if there isn't another, different, copy of the gene present, and are called recessives. (blue eyes are a common example: A blue-eyed person has both genes as expressing "blue". Two blue eyed parents, having only the "blue" gene (hah!) to pass on to a child, will have a blue-eyed child (barring mutation). (Of course, the body is a big nasty mess of self-referencing code with lots of gotos, so examples tend to be oversimplified). Anyway, most recessives tend to be fairly rare in expressing, since any dominant gene will cover them up. Many recessives are bad. (Cystic Fibrosis is the most common example: 1 bad gene, okay. 2 bad genes: You die) A parthenogenetic process would allow for the study of recessives because you can take ova from a carrier (someone who has 1 copy of the bad gene), find one with the defective gene, put it through the parthenogenesis process, and bam, able to study the effects free of the presence of any other (different) copy of the gene.
Fun Fact: For 22 Chromosomes, people have two copies of most genes. Sex Chromosomes are not created equal. The X chromosome (every human has 1) has valuable and nifty genes. The Y chromosome (only in men) has very few genes (relatively). As a result, on Men X chromosomes express all recessives, and not on women. (The common example here is red-green colorblindness. Men with a defective gene are out of luck: Color-blind. Women with a defective gene get by if the other copy of the X chromosome has a functioning one. Result: Men are much more likely to be red-green color-blind.
Some papers a few months ago got some press for exploring the possible effects of this. (Men can serve as a "testing ground" for new mutations on the X chromosome, while women can serve as a judge of whether they are valuable without taking on the extra risk. Practiced through natural selection.)
Fun Fact #2: Women's cells don't just function with twice the number of X chromosomes though (We tend to react poorly to extra copies
To paraphrase Fredric Brown, "This breakthrough will result in the birth of thousands of JCs."
Roman Priests: Your thoughts betray you. Your feelings for them are strong. Especially for...sister! So, you have a twin sister. Your feelings have now betrayed her, too. The Three Wise Men were wise to hide her from me. Now his failure is complete. If you will not turn to the dark side, then perhaps she will.
CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!
Not that I put any credence in this theology business, but I'm afraid you're mistaken. Christ is supposed to be wholly Man and wholly God, not half of each. Your view of Christ seems similar to the Nestorian heresy, and has been out of style for about 1,700 years.
Not to spoil a joke, but we went through this last time. This method of conception only produces female offspring.
What I got from the article from the BBC certainly suggested that possibility. If the scientific community didn't know that parthenogenesis in humans was possible to induce, and if this scientist didn't know that it was believed impossible...
He would've been in trouble anyway because of where he got the eggs from, but it's possible this was an almost-innocent mistake.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
Interesting enough, I just came across this term while looking up Komodo Dragons (which apparently in some cases have been known to have parthenogenic conception while in captivity). There's a wikipedia article on it here. Apparently it has also been known to occur in some fish/sharks or birds (as noted, in incubated turkey eggs).
Actually the wikipedia article is pretty interesting. I wonder if by discovering ways to do this in a test-tube environment, scientists could pave the way to enabling asexual reproduction within mammals or humans... a scary thought actually.
Just to add to this, if a woman is color-blind, then I believe it follows that her offspring will indefinitely be color-blind as well, as the husband has not the genetic material to supply for color-vision?
Actually, it was pretty common for celebrity a few thousand years ago to insist the "authorized biography" included:
- virgin birth
- a star
- a prophecy
- relation to a god
Examples are:
-Rome's founder, Romulus, was the Son of the God Mars, and Rea Sivia, a mortal Vestal virgin
-Alexander the Great (conceived a thunderbolt from Zeus) (Today we just use electricity on the cell)
-emperor Augustus (son of God Apollo, conceived by a holy-snake)
-Minerva was the daughter of Jupiter not by sexual union
-daughter of the river Sangarius, they say, took of the fruit and laid it in her bosom, when it at once disappeared, but she was with child. A boy was born, and exposed, but was tended by a he-goat. [Pausanias, Description of Greece 7.17.9-11]
-Jesus
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
Rather than harvesting cells from regular babies, we harvest cells from baby Jesus. That doesn't seem like it will make the fundies happier.
I don't understand what he said he had done, nor what he actually did.
Glory Season ftw!
Who Suck Wang?
That's right kids: every month a woman murders a precious potential life with her sinful menstruation. No wonder the OT made them sit out alone and think about what they had done.
Remember guys: everytime you allow a fertile woman to go a month without being impregnated, you make God very very angry.
And s/he gives men reason to hope too.
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
> This happens when eggs are stimulated into becoming embryos without ever being fertilised by sperm,
Sweet!
1. No sperm!
2. Therefore, the mountain god Yahweh doesn't infuse the cell with a soul.
3. Therefore it is not a person.
4. Profit!
We did it! We did it! Humanity finally tricked Yahweh!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.