Redstate

Posted at 1:16pm on Nov. 23, 2007 A Layman's Guide to Recent Stem Cell Developments

By TomlinsonDouthat

Promoted from Diaries by Mark I.

Embryonic stem cells are valuable because they are pluripotent. Pluripotency comes from Latin, roughly meaning "can do many things" (literally, "can do more things"), and in this matter it means that these cells can become almost any other kind of cell. They are basically blank disks: If you give the right information to a disk, it will become, in a way, a word processor or a game or a movie or whatever. In much the same way, if you feed an embryonic stem cell the right information (encoded in chemicals), it can become just about any other kind of cell. And cells like this might be used for all sorts of medical purposes for patients that are in need of a certain, very specific kind of cell.

There are two catches, though. The first is that, once you feed information to the embryonic stem cell "blank disks," you can't overwrite the information. (At least you haven't been able to, as we'll see below.) If you turn an embryonic stem cell into a red blood cell, it stays a red blood cell; and if you turn it into a skin cell, it stays a skin cell. Happily, before you do that, while embryonic stem cells are still embryonic stem cells, you can copy them as many times as you want. So you'll have enough to make whatever you need to make and still have enough left over for future projects.

Read on...

Posted in Adult Stem Cells | Embryonic Stem Cell Research | ethical alternatives | Life Issues | stem cells — Comments (113) / Email this page » / Read More »