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Scientists Use Stem Cells To Regenerate the External Layer of a Human Heart (indy100.com)
schwit1 quotes a report from Indy100: A team of scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School have used adult skin cells to regenerate functional human heart tissue. The study, published in the journal Circulation Research, detailed that the team took adult skin cells, using a technique called messenger RNA to turn them into pluripotent stem cells, before inducing them to become two different types of cardiac cells. Then for two weeks they infused the hearts with a nutrient solution, allowing them to develop under the same circumstances a heart would grow inside a human body. After the two week period, the hearts contained well-structured tissue, which appeared similar to that contained in developing human hearts. When shocked with electricity, they started beating. This represents the closest that medical researchers have come to growing an entire beating human heart.
None? They're made from skin cells
This is the typical anti-science hysteria which there seems to be a huge problem with lately. Firstly, please try to understand things before you make a comment as it's just likely to mislead other people if you appear to know what you're talking about even if what you've said is clearly baseless. Secondly, please keep religious to yourself. And finally, please please don't vote or put yourself in any position of responsibility as you don't seem qualified.
FYI, all cells use an intermediate form of nucleic acid (i.e., mRNA) to produce proteins. mRNA is transcribed from the host cell DNA and translated to construct protein(s) using ribosomes (yet another form of nucleic acid: rRNA).
you seem to be pretty irrational in your response.
GP was wrong to not read carefully and assume, (like lots of people) that all stem cells are embryonic stem cells (which btw are pretty useless scientifically) and this involved latter. sibling reply has already addressed that mistake before you,
but you are wrong to say "please keep religious to yourself" and "please don't vote or put yourself in any position of responsibility as you don't seem qualified".
1/ he did not refer to religion.
2/ one can be anti abortion, and/or anti embryonic stem cell harvesting, without being religious.
3/ he should be free to, and as an active citizen should, express ethical concerns based on ethical rules stemming from religion or any beliefs he has. (btw all moral codes, that extend beyond 1 person at 1 point of time, are beliefs).
4/ everyone operate with limited knowledge and qualifications (that includes you, GP and me), none are not omniscient gods. so no one should be excluded on arbitrary criteria preferred by some. instead rational discussion and debate, backed with verifiable facts, should be criteria on which words and actions should be judged. did you do that?
The hyperlink in the summary should be modified to the following:
http://www.popsci.com/scientists-grow-transplantable-hearts-with-stem-cells?con=TrueAnthem&dom=fb&src=SOC&utm_campaign=&utm_content=58753766a167da00066f21ce&utm_medium=&utm_source=
The summary link leads to a summary of a different news article at Popular Science (above link). The Popular Science article provides sufficient information to understand the techniques used to produce stem cells to regrow cardiac tissue.
Funny how people like you are more concerned with a ball of cells than an actual human that breathes air. Goes to show, you end up with weird values when you base how you live your life on the rantings of a bunch of bronze age goat herders.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Yeah a great economy is all that matters.... oh wait I actually care about free speech, reduction in gun crime, better foreign relations, less hate crime, better education, less corruption, better healthcare and a vast swathe of other things that I guess you don't feel are needed.
PopSci had this story nearly a year ago ... back in March 2016
It's just not necessary, unless researchers need totipotent cells, since pluripotent cells are what's being discussed here.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Has the baby been born that will live to it's 200th birthday?
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
I'm pro-science and anti-abortion. Most of my friends are. That statement is literally like saying "How can you be pro-science and vegan". Both are saying you cannot support science while respecting life.
if your girlfriend dumps you ... stem cell technology still has a long way to go ...
(understand the fucking article)
The summary is somewhat inaccurate and oversimplified (this is Slashdot, of course).
The authors took donor hearts and removed all the cardiac cells, leaving only the extracellular matrix, which is the scaffolding that cells reside in. They then created stem cells from skin cells, not via a technique called "messenger RNA" (which is a type of biological molecule and not a technique), but by reprogramming the skin cells by providing synthetic messenger RNAs that instruct the cells to make 5 proteins that cause a "reversal" to a stem cell-like state. These new stem cells were instructed to become cardiac cells, which spontaneously exhibited "a heart beat", and then seeded onto slices of the cardiac matrix from a donor heart, and even a full heart. The cells contracted in unison, and could be "paced" by a "pacemaker".
Limitations of this approach are that the you need a human heart to start with (until a scaffold could be 3D printed, for example), cells did not fully differentiate into mature heart muscle cells, don't seem to maintain this fate past a certain time frame, didn't develop into all cell types needed for a functioning heart, and contracted with only a fraction of the force that a normal human heart does. But damn, the bioreactor with "grown" heart is incredible to behold (figure 6E), and this appears to be an interesting step forward to lab grown organs.
I'm really going to miss Wheeler though. Brightest star in Obama's tenure. The speculation on his replacement is grim.
In their (generally laudable) opposition to the insane overregulation foisted upon the country by Democrats, Republicans have forgotten that regulation IS appropriate and beneficial when it levels a playing field for competition. They are idiots to cede that issue to the Democrats.
Since 2006, they've had the ability to convert your own adult cells into pluripotent stem cells. Why the heck would you extract them from an embryo?
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
"Respecting Life" is an arbitrary moral code that runs counter to logic. You know any carnivorous mammal has to kill more than one thing to live, so logically you would want to exterminate entire species to respect life under the same code. Oh wait, it's more subtle to that and has a bunch of religious mumbo jumbo behind something about humans being special? Right, you're a liar and a nut, just like most of your "friends" with which you're trying to make some specious rationalization.
Womble, we know that the fetus is viable on it's own after 20 weeks of gestation, so at that point, from a scientific standpoint the only difference between a fetus and a baby is location of residence and method of getting nutrients. Further, we have scientifically advanced our definition of human life (and human death) as the presence of lack of brain activity. For the fetus, this begins at around 6 weeks. Thus, from our current understanding and legal definition of human life, which we apply across the board to all human beings (except for the fetus, due to a mistake by 7 attorneys in black robes 43 years ago), human life begins at around 6 weeks after conception, and a fetus is certainly a human being at 20 weeks.
As you can tell I have a strong pro-life position, and I have thoroughly researched the issue as I personally had to make a choice on the issue of one life or another. 99% of pro-life advocates believe in exceptions for abortion in cases where the life of the mother is in danger, where abortion is a sad but necessary procedure. We do not agree that abortion for the convenience of the mother or father is acceptable. Carrying to term and childbirth are difficult consequences for irresponsible unprotected sex, but adoption is a far better option for the mental and physical health of everyone involved over 99% of the time.
Just 2.8% of women surveyed claimed that their abortion was over concerns for maternal health in the one survey that is available on the subject. The actual stats are un-knowable because no solid studies have been performed thanks to the pro-abortion lobbies who want to obfuscate the issue. We do know that maternal childbirth related deaths in the US are at 0.0185% vs Brazil at 0.055% which has strict anti-abortion laws. Assuming all the difference has nothing to do with quality of health care or delivery facilities (which it doesn't), we are talking about a 0.037% difference in maternal childbirth mortality rates. You and I think nothing of jumping in a car where your risk of dying over three years of driving is 0.033% or about the delta in risk rates. The odds of dying from a legal abortion are higher but comparable with any invasive medical procedure. Again, impossible to find exact stats due to obfuscation at the highest levels. These numbers for medically necessary abortions hardly scratch the surface on the 54,000,000 abortions since Roe v Wade.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
http://www.factcheck.org/2012/...
http://www.politifact.com/new-...
http://riskcalculator.facs.org...
The fact that you have to attack a person's religious beliefs instead of simply using facts like I have above shows just how weak your pro-abortion position is. Science since 1973 continues to show that the practice of abortion on demand is taking the life of another human being. There is a reason that no federal law has ever been passed making abortion legal, and that is that anyone who spends time actually digging into the facts (or who becomes pregnant and watches the ultrasound) can conclude that a fetus is a human life. In 100 years, society will look back at abortion in much the same way we look back at slavery. Amazed and disgusted that a civilized society could condone the savage abuse of a innocent, defenseless portion of the population for convenience.
http://www.whattoexpect.com/pr...
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
if you're lumping Muslim extremists in with Christians
Hate to break it to you, all current major religions were started by bronze age goat herders.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
But he's right even if he's giving the wrong implication. Billions of babies have died for your stem cells to have evolved into a human being. Given the current world population, at least 8B more will die, should the world end today.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.