Researchers Discover Key To Human Embryonic Stem-cell Potential

ScienceDaily | Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research ^ | 2005-09-11

[sourcery]

This Venn diagram represents how stem-cell master regulators Oct4, Nanog, and Sox2 work together in regulating the genome. It shows the number of genes that they interact with individually, in pairs, or as a triad. (Image courtesy of Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research)

[sourcery]

Ping

[Ingtar]

Excellently designed mechanism.

[Shalom Israel]

Can't wait to hear what "evangelicals" and "creationists" have to say about this.

"This" is completely irrelevant to the crevo debate one way or the other.

[jwalsh07]

Your wait is over. Creating human life and then destroying it so you can live a few years longer is utilitarian garbage.

How'd I do?

[TruthFactor]

I think they'll say is, the more we learn about this science, the more it looks like the destruction of human like is unnecessary to the advancement of understanding.

[RadioAstronomer]

very exciting news ping.

[lepton]

Hmm foundational research.

So far, the cry to have the government fund ESC research is as if there was a cry to create delicious sandwiches using only subatomic particles: Far more complicated than it has to be, especially with usable intermediates reaping results.

[muawiyah]

How about this ~ it's still "junk science". The problem with you using someone else's cells in your body is they will be identified as "foreign" and your immune system will devour them like so many pieces of meat.

This can be overcome through the use of powerful drugs that disable your immune system, but they leave you vulnerable to all sorts of diseases the rest of your life.

Embryonic stem cells necessarily come from "somebody else" even if you don't think they are a "somebody"!

Where they have been used, the recipients developed cancer.

The best bet appears to be the development of a technology that extracts your OWN stem cells (of whatever type), grows them in vast numbers, and then reinjects them. This way your immune system is tricked into not eating them!

BTW, the initial idea behind using embryonic stem cells was they had apparantly not developed to the extent that they would be incompatible with someone else's cells. Of course, that was garbage. They are identified.

[syriacus]

But in order to guide them out of pluripotency with efficiency, we need to know what keeps them there to begin with.

Do I understand this correctly?

... we need to experiment with pluripotent cells
in order to understand them enough
in order to to make them into cells
that aren't pluripotent.

[PatrickHenry]

very exciting news ping.

Agreed. Stem-cell research isn't exactly right for the evolution ping list, and I really wish someone would start up a list devoted to this kind of article. Still, considering how much anti-science posting we get in the evolution threads, this is worth cranking up the ping machine ...

[PatrickHenry]

EvolutionPing

A pro-evolution science list with over 300 names. See the list's explanation at my freeper homepage. Then FReepmail to be added or dropped.

[jwalsh07]

To be clear though, I have nothing against and in fact am all for research using CBE's harvested from cord blood. To that I am willing to contribute tax money, to creating embryos to harvest stem cells I am willing to contribute nothing.

[RinaseaofDs]

I know what the atheists will say, "This was completely an accident involving amino acids in a puddle that got caught in the lightning storm one day and were zapped. The rest is history, and the human wrist and human foot are the marvels of biological engineering they are today."

In other words,

"What a happy accident."

[Wormwood]

Exactly.

Obviously a noodly appendage is at work.

[The Red Zone]

Still, considering how much anti-science posting we get in the evolution threads

And with that, cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war. Right.

[AntiGuv]

Stem-cell research isn't exactly right for the evolution ping list, and I really wish someone would start up a list devoted to this kind of article.

I wouldn't mind maintaining such a list, but how would it be described? The wave-of-the-future ping? I mean, what exactly are the parameters you'd have in mind?

[SeaLion]

considering how much anti-science posting we get in the evolution threads, this is worth cranking up the ping machine

Agreed--thanks for ping.

For what it's worth: the source for stem-cells in research is one (contentious) issue, but the science of understanding the structure and behaviour of stem cells should n't push anyone's buttons, it is wonderous and beautiful. I keep a healthy handful of salt at the ready when it comes to some of the claims for potential therapies that might be enabled--jury's out, but let's let them deliberate

[bahblahbah]

I on the "other hand" couldn't wait for somebody to disparage Christians. You get a cookie for getting it in before it was even possible to read the article, improper usage of quotation marks, and somehow being ignorant enough to somehow include evangelicalism with creationism.

How about you ask the director of one of the institutes which funded this research his opinion?

Francis S. Collins has been the director of the National Institutes of Health's National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) since 1993. Before that, he was a research geneticist at the University of Michigan, where he and his colleagues were the first to clone the gene for cystic fibrosis. A practicing Christian, Collins is particularly interested in the ethical implications of human genetics research.