Review of Research Paper on Creating Home-Made Stem Cells

Our paper discusses an important step in the research surrounding stem cells. Pluripotent stem cells are found in the early blastocyst, and can differentiate into different cell types such as neurons, cardiac muscle, or blood cells. As is explained elsewhere on this paper, stem cells are extremely useful and hold amazing medical potential, especially to â€Å"grow† specific cells, tissues, and even organs for patients. Controversy mires the progress of stem cell research from embryos, however, and technical problems exist along with the ethical ones. Marius Wernig and his team of scientists have had success studying a way to get around this, however. What if, instead of taking stem cells from newly created embryos, an individual’s own cells could be used? The cells in the adult body are no longer stem cells; they aren’t pluripotent, and can only be a certain type. But with special techniques, it’s actually possible to induce these adult cells to become stem cells, with a pluripotency that allows them to develop into whatever cell type is needed! In this experiment, induced pluripotent stem cells were created using the fibroblast cells from mice. Fibroblasts were removed from underneath the skin of the subject mice. In order to revert the cell back to a induced pluripotent state, four specially selected transcription factors (Oct 4, Sox 2, c-Myc and Klf4) were used. These four transcription factors were each incorporated into the DNA of a virus that lacked the capacity to infect, and the fibroblasts were exposed to these viruses. Just like normal viruses, these injected their DNA into the fibroblast cells, and the DNA was incorporated into the cell. Now the fibroblasts contained the new transcription ... ... become a breeding ground for debate as well as a popular platform for presidential candidates. These topics have also become very partisan issues, Democrats being known to fully support stem cell research and Republicans being known to disagree with the practices involved with it. In 2004, stem cell research was a particularly hot topic, and it is commonly thought that President Bush’s second term was won that year due to his stance on embryonic stem cell research. He thought is was unethical to create any more embryonic stem cell lines, but that the use of the existing ones for research was acceptable. Works Cited Wernig, Marius, Alexander Meissner, Ruth Foreman, Tobias Brambrink, Manching Ku, Konrad Hochedlinger, Bradley E. Bernstein & Rudolf Jaenisch. "In vitro reprogramming of fibroblasts into pluripotent ES-cell-like state." Nature 448(2007): 318-325.