One Less Reason for Embryonic Stem Cells
Skin cells turned directly into heart cells.
Scientists have successfully converted adult skin cells directly into beating heart cells efficiently without having to first go through the laborious process of generating embryonic-like stem cells.
The powerful general technology platform could lead to novel treatments for diseases and injuries involving cell loss or damage such as heart disease, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s disease, according to researchers at the Scripps Research Institute.
In 2006, Japanese scientists reported that they could reprogram mouse skin cells to become pluripotent simply by inserting a set of four genes into the cells dubbed induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. But creating iPS cells itself is a time taking procedure.
Hence, lead author Sheng Ding and colleagues tweaked the process by completely bypassing the iPS stage and going directly from one type of mature cell (a skin cell) to another (a heart cell).
Amazing. This is almost the biological equivalent of alchemy.
Filed under: Doug • Ethics & Morality • Science • Stem Cells
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As a biochemist who has recently perused your site, I have to say that your understanding of biology and genetic engineering is extremely poor at best, and misinformed and self-serving and worst. Pluripotence does not equate to totipotence.
In blocking ESCs, Bush sentenced untold hundreds of thousands to death in impeding science. Which aids the entirety of humanity, by the way, not just undeserving luddites.
Thanks for stopping by and letting us know what you think.
Indeed, I’m not a biologist or biochemist. What I am is an observer of results of these sciences. I have been amazed at the advances in the area of stem cells and even, in this case, results not even requiring the step through stem cells.
My issues with ESCs are ethical and moral. And thus every chance I get to highlight how many of the promises of ESCs are being done today with adult stem cells, I do. Each example is, I believe, one less reason to push for the experimentation with ESCs and to avoid the moral issues associated with them.
I don’t think that rooting for the successes of ASCs makes me a Luddite. However, I seek to reconcile scientific advancement with my moral and ethical values, which I think any good scientist ought to do; measure their methods against their morals. When that is not done, we get 1940s Germany, for example.
Thus, every instance where we find less of a need for ESCs, and even when skin cells can be made directly into heart cells, it should be celebrated.