Researchers in California have discovered a synthetic protein that may be able to turn adult cells back into stem cells (or at least a convenient stem-cell substitute.)
Sheng Ding and colleagues of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla discovered the molecule, which they named reversine. When they treated mouse muscle-forming cells with the drug, the cells apparently reverted to a 'blank' state capable of forming other kinds of tissues. The researchers were then able to guide the cells into becoming bone or fat cells instead.
These are preiliminary findings, so obviously there are many, many questions yet to be answered. But I hope they're on to something. We need stem cells without all the ethical and legal problems.
via KurzweilAI.net
Muse Magazine (it's my daughter's subscription, okay, but I'd like to be half as smart as the kids who read it) had an article in the Feb/04 issue called "The Face of Immortality." Abut hydra. "Since the early 1900s, people who'd worked with hydra claimed that the animals were immortal," the article says. Daniel Martinez, a scientist at Pomona College, has discovered that the reason they live so long (20 times as long as they should, whatever that means), is that "the little guys are essentially 'a bag of stem cells.' They use these all-purpose cells to continuously rebuild their bodies."
In the future, body building will not be about sculpting muscle, but rebuilding ourselves from the cellular level.
Posted by: Kathy Hanson at January 30, 2004 01:36 PM