"...initial creation of human embryonic stem cells 10 years ago.."
Have we actually created them?
Why must Science always put the good bits after the jump? None of the other niche writers (Theater, Art, Politics) feels the need for such timidity. Post forcefully, Science!
If only we'd kept Terri Schiavo alive long enough to see this day.
Actually, this is a viral insertion method, and you only get around 100 proto stem-cells out of around 1 million skin cells.
And it's of limited use as the science reporter at the Washington Post had to admit when I and others interrogated him today about it.
Don't worry, all the religious freaks will hate this too.
the next leap will be tricorders & those little flashy lights they affix to your temples.
Hm...
Wouldn't obstruct replication but it does give rise to an error in replication so that the newly formed DNA strand carries with it a mutation and you've got a virus again... but this, all of this is academic.
@Will: I've made this same efficiency criticism in the past. It's not great, but good enough(tm).
And, like I said, with viral insertion there is no way this could be used clinically. For in vitro work, I'd trust it. And, with tat-mediated protein transduction, I have a feeling this would work.
@Chip: You made my day with that comment.
There still seems so much to work out re: silencing the genetic insertions, the health of the resultant daughters through multiple passages after genomic restructuring, chromatin remodelling, etc.--It's hard to believe that these cells could become viable for use after the transformation to stem cell-like and then re-differentiation. On paper it seems like a grand breakthrough, but so did gene therapy once upon a time...
I apologize for the tasteless and cruel remark about Terri Schiavo.
@6,@7 - I know, the mutation factor plus the lack of replication, and clinical non-usage makes it only a stopgap solution.
Meanwhile all the bio research money is flooding offshore.
Way to kill America, radical fundies!
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