Hi everyone...I am writing this after 2 months..Many people asked me to write about stem cells...My sis asked me about how these stem cells can work and how they can be stored for future use..Its spring break for me and I decided to spend some time to write about this topic in my blog.
What are stem cells?
Stem cells are the cells which have potency to renew themselves throughout the life. These cells are capable of either differentiating into all cell types or only into specific type of cells. They are classified into two types based on there differentiation.
1. Embroyonic stem cells
2. Adult stem cells
Embroyonic stem cells are capable of differentiating into all types of cells and that is the reason why these cells are very important where as adult stem cells are capable of differentiating into only one particular type of cells like bone marrow cells...Now everyone think of one example for stem cells and I am sure you got something into your mind..Yes, all of you are right..our skin cells are also one type of stem cells which replace immediately if there is some injury. Basically, they act like an internal repair system. I think everyone must have got some basic idea about stem cells by this time.
Now, will go a little deeper into how these stem cells work and about stem cell research. In a 3-5 days old embryo, the inner cell mass give rise to all cell types and produces the entire body of the organism. Three important properties of stem cells make them unique:
1. They are unspecialized
2. capable of dividing and renewing for long periods
3. produces specilaized cell types
Before understanding how these stem cells are useful to humans, I would like to introduce one new term here: Induced pluripotent stem cells(iPSCs)
These are adult cells which are modified to maintain the state of embryonic stem cells by forcing them to express genes necessary for embroyonic stem cells.
These stem cells can be used in research in many ways like drug testing, to understand the complex events that occur during human development(how these cells can produce the whole human body), cancer treatment(abnormal growth occurs during cancer and stem cells also grow abnormally, so which genes are required for abnormal growth? How to turn these genes off?)
The most important use of stem cells is generation of cells and tissues for transplantation therapies.Stem cells can be directed to differentiate into specific cell types and can be used for replacing cells during Alzheimers disease, spinal cord injury, diabetes, heart disease etc.
For example, people suffering from diabetes has insufficient insulin in there body and insulin producing cells are destroyed. These stem cells can be directed to differentiate into insulin producing cells and can be transplanted into the body. Cells from umbilical cord are rich source of stem cells. Cord cells are extracted during pregnancy and stored in cryogenic cell banks. These cells can be used for transplantation to newborn baby in future or to mother, father or any other close relatives. Closer relationship have less chance of rejection.
There are lot of applications of stem cells and they are helping humans for a better health. If there are these many uses of stem cells, why are people against the stem cell research.... People think that stem cell research is killing a baby as cells are extracted from blastocyst (a few days old embryo) but this blastocyst doesnot have any human features and these are created through invitro fertilization purposely for research work. According to me, this is nothing going against god and taking away lives.I am also glad that Obama has restarted the funding for stem cell research by expanding the type of stem cell lines that can be used in research...I never got an opportunity to work with stem cells and I hope I will be working with stem cells in the future.
I think, I gave a better idea of stem cells by this time........Bye for now and I will be coming up with one more interesting topic in few days.
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