First is from Nature:
"Thomas Skutella at the Centre for Regenerative Biology and Medicine in Tübingen, Germany, and colleagues showed that spermatogonial stem cells can convert over prolonged periods in culture to become pluripotent — meaning that they appear capable of forming all cell types."
"Using biopsies from testes of 22 patients, the researchers generated cells that express genes characteristic of embryonic stem cells but not spermatagonial stem cells. When injected into mice without immune systems, the cells form teratomas — the bizarre benign tumours that contain cells representing all the major categories of tissue and are considered standard practice for assessing pluripotency. However, Skutella says he's still working to perfect the technique. Though the cells form teratomas and can even be differentiated into insulin-producing cells, they express pluripotency genes at lower levels than embryonic stem cells do."
The second success was reported in Nature Biotech via Harvard Science:
"Imagine, if you can, a day within the next decade when a physician-scientist could remove a skin cell from your arm, and with a few chemicals turn that fully formed adult cell into a dish of stem cells genetically matched to you.
That day came a step closer to reality Oct. 12 with the publication in Nature Biotechnology of a report in which Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers describe successfully having used a chemical in place of half the gene cocktail currently used to reprogram adult cells into induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells.
"This study demonstrates there's a possibility that instead of using genes and viruses to reprogram cells, one can use chemicals," said Doug Melton, HSCI co-director and senior author of the study, whose first author is Danwei Huangfu, a postdoctoral fellow in Melton's lab. "The exciting thing about Danwei's work is you can see how one might be able to sprinkle chemicals on cells and make stem cells," said Melton, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, giving his postdoc credit for the experiment."
The stunning successes of non-embryonic stem cells created by reprogramming adult cells completely removes the need for embryonic stem cell research. Although research continues on embryonic stem cells it will not likely become a mainstay in the rush to create custom genetically matched stem cells for specific individuals.
The good news keeps rolling in.
2 comments:
Hi, I am going off-topic. What do you think of your critics here?
http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=233130
Btw I actually like your blog. I myself am learning about atheism.
The response from them is just as predictable as can be. They charge "strawman" without specifics, use the lame excuse that atheism is "not a philosophy, it is a conclusion" (directly contradicting the position that atheism is "no God theory" that is usually used).
It gets good when they start contradicting themselves around msg #9.
At that point, they then descend into quibbling amongst themselves over definitions of what an atheist is.
But at comment #30, one person agrees partially with me.
Then it's back to quibbling amongst themselves. This is the biggest feature of atheism, that it spawns all sorts of contradictory positions and worldviews. There is no foundational principle upon which to base rational thought, so no rational thought results.
Atheists believe they are rational yet there is not a single proponent of Atheism that defines what "rational" means, nor do they ever produce the fundamentals of logic.
To the Atheist, he is rational due to having rejected a part of reality... without having any empirical evidence for that rejection. It is enough for most of them that they can be called "brights" and even "more highly intelligent" (Dawkins) by virtue of that decision to reject something.
That is logically absurd. But the Atheist acclimates to an environment of continual inversion of conventional logic as he invents his own manner of reasoning. This manner of reasoning is usually "rationalization", whereby the conclusion is assumed, and evidence is created to support the conclusion. This is the invert of the usual rational approach which finds evidence, then draws a conclusion based on the evidence. One must be open to the possibility of any conclusion when one commits to rational logic; the atheist has a prior commitment to his rejection concept.
Atheists become so accustomed to this type of thinking that they cannot be persuaded to see it in themselves, regardless of how blatant or egregious the rationalization is.
So I am rarely concerned by Atheist comments; they are based on an inverted worldview, and an inverted logic which is molded into an impermeable dogma.
Another thing about Atheists is that they love to argue, appearing to argue from an ever-changing base of theory. These theories vary from atheist to atheist and lead to interminable discussions that make no rational sense whatsoever.
Watch it for yourself, but first study logic and rational thought, based on the First Principles. And certainly investigate limitations of empirical and forensic science; these are also falsely claimed by Atheists.
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