This Week In Science

That isn't necessarily what happened this week, I have known about it for a long while, but nonetheless it is still equally fascinating.

I would love to go into that room and listen to my body functions just out of pure curiosity!

Well, I dont always put something that happened this week in here. Though I usually do cap it off with those. I didnt feel the need to stick to a strict format, lol.

SCIENTISTS USE ACID TO TURN BLOOD CELLS INTO STEM CELLS IN 30 MINUTES.



This is a game changer, folks. Whereas mining stem cells has been either an ethical quandary or a months-long affair, scientist can now turn any old blood cells into stem cells in just 30 minutes—by dipping them in acid.

That's right. Take blood cells, add acid, get stem cells. It's as simple as it sounds.

A team of Japanese scientists stumbled upon the method after observing a similar phenomenon in plants, where environmental stress can morph an ordinary cell into an immature one. New plants could then grow from the immature cell. This has also been known to happen in birds and reptiles, so the team from the Riken Center for Developmental Biology set out to see if something similar could happen with mammals.

They started with mice, of course. Sure enough, when they exposed blood cells from mice to acid, a transformation began. While some of the blood cells died, many became stem cells within a couple of days. "It looks a bit too good to be true, but the number of experts who have reviewed and checked this, I'm sure that it is," Chris Mason, professor of regenerative medicine at University College London, told the BBC. "If this works in people as well as it does in mice, it looks faster, cheaper and possibly safer than other cell reprogramming technologies—personalized reprogrammed cell therapies may now be viable.

This new discovery not only means that we can produce stem cells cheaply and quickly but also potentially cut through the ethical debate, because no embryos would be harmed. If it works in humans, that is. Of course, there's plenty more research to be done before scientists can fully understand the process and develop methods for stem cell research. But hot damn, this is good news. [New Scientist, BBC]

It doesn't sound like something that should be able to happen, but if it does in humans then a lot of things in medical science could change. I'd be interested to know why it happens.

Well, im just glad that now there is a path without ethical,moral, let face it, religious, arguments holding up the works on developing studies into stem cells.

I'd like to read the paper about that most recent one. Could you cite the source, please?

This sounds more like sensationalism than like science by all means. The only "Blood Cells" I know of that can by any stretch become anything like stem cells would be the leucocytes of which there are a myriad of types. In any case the sum of all leucocytes still amounts to something around 0.15% of the total number of cells per unit of blood which in turn consists of pure water to almost 50% of its mass and that is water outside of any cells within it. The other "blood cells" would be erythrocytes and thrombocytes neither of which have any cell nuclei much less DNA that afaik is kind of an important thing in a stem cell.

Now if this is true and they did manage to get back to stem cells from leucocytes, that is perhaps a step to their artificial replication and thus an absolution from constantly incoming human tissue as a raw material. But that "blood+acid=stem cell" illustration is insultingly simplistic at best and grossly misleading and sensationalist unless I'm missing out on a magical secret about blood they won't tell about... Perhaps the paper discusses it more appropriately and explains what it is they really found, if anything.