Blog #7: Article Summaries Subjects:Stem Cell & Cloning

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=cell-induced-pluripotent

Stem Cell: Article ONE

Cell-Off: Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells Fall Short of Potential Found in Embryonic Version

According to scientists Pluripotent stem cells are falling short compared to Embryonic stem cells. It seems that when reprogramming Pluripotent stem cells to attempt to make them as capable as ones from embryos(or, embryonic stem cells) the cells end up resulting aberrant and die abnormally. As a result scientists around the world are currently exploring different techniques for reprogramming mature cells attempting to make them potent.The current progress being made is toward controlled differentiation of the human iPs cell into various tissue types such as 1.heart 2.neuron 3.liver 4. pancreas 5. eye. There is a lot of excitement surrounding iPs cells but noone seems to want to hear the problems surrounding these cells. One issue that scientists discovered was that iPs cells had significantly higher rates of cell death than the embryonic stem cells. IPs cells seem to have a lot of problems but this does not mean that they don't have the potential. All that scientists need is time to work out the issues and they can be very sucessful in the near future. Reading the article I feel that with more extensive research science can advance in the next several years and be able to do proper stem cell research without too many problems.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=doctor-attempts-to-clone-people-2009-04-22

Cloning: Article Two

Doctor attempts to clone people


Panayiotis Zavos a doctor who operates a fertility clinic in Kentucky and Cyprus recently told British reporters that he had sucessfully cloned 14 human embryos. Zavos went into further detail claiming that he implanted or transfered 11 of those embryos into the uteruses of four women. None of these embryos resulted in a sucessful pregnancy but Zavos is confident that cloning babies is not far from reach. Scientists are confident that Zavos's claim can become reality because they have been cloning animals using adult cells since the mid 90's. Denny Sakkas says that cloning embryos is one thing but turning those embryos into healthy babies is quite different and more difficult. Sakkas claims that this would mean you would have to wipe the slate clean with respect to "gene expression" in the somatic nucleus, thus reestablishing a new sequence of gene expression. Considerig the many genese involved there is a good chance that a lot could go wrong. After reading this article I have gathered that there is still a lot more that has to be researched as well as tested for cloning to work. There are still many ethical issues that people would also have to deal with and resolve before the cloning of humans would be accepted. The cloning of organs seems to be a good idea because there are not enough people that are willing to donate their body for organ transplants, and this would eliminate much of the wait as well as keep humans living a much longer life.