Posts Tagged ‘Stem Cells and Cord Blood’
Types of Stem Cells: Power
The power of stem cells refers to the potential they possess certain stem cells to differentiate and to become specific cell types. Stem cells can be obtained from a variety of sources among which include: the embryo (embryonic stem cells), umbilical cord blood and adult bone marrow, which can extract stem cells. Depending on the source from which they derive, stem cells may come to possess certain specific power.
Power of Stem Cells
The main types of power of stem cells which have focused recent research on stem cells include the following:
- Totipotent.
- Pluripotent.
- Multipotent. Read the rest of this entry »
Stem Cells: Application
The study of stem cells will allow us to understand the mechanisms of cell specialization. What mechanisms cause a gene to be active and do their job and what mechanisms inhibit the expression of that gene. Cancer, for example, is a case of abnormal cell specialization.
Stem cells can be used to test new drugs in all types of tissue prior to actual testing in animals or humans.
Stem cells have applications in cell therapy, regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. Many diseases are caused by malfunctions cellular or tissue destruction. One of the remedies, in severe cases, it is the transplant. Pluripotent stem cells stimulated to develop into specialized cells offer the possibility of replacing frequently damaged cells and tissues. So may be used in cases of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, spinal cord injuries, burns, heart or brain injuries, diabetes, osteoporosis and rheumatoid arthritis. Read the rest of this entry »
Stem Cells: Cloning
Recently the British government has allowed research on human embryos to obtain stem cells. Usually use a process similar to that used in animal cloning:
- It takes an egg to be extracted nuclear material. The nucleus is removed from an adult cell of the individual to be cloned.
- Transferring the nucleus of an adult cell taken from the egg
- From here we have an artificial zygote may, after embryonic development, grow into a cloned individual, genetically identical to the guy who pulled the adult cell.
If in the early stages of embryo development extract cells from the blastocyst inner cell mass and we specialize, we could obtain any tissue for transplant.
Adult stem cells
In an adult there are tissues in which some cells are actively dividing, but not in others. Among those who fall are the bone marrow and skin, they found stem cells in bone marrow and skin. These cells reproduce and generate specialized cells in blood and skin respectively. Other tissues have also been found specialized stem cells that can reproduce and generate specialized tissues and only those tissues. These specialized stem cells are scarce and difficult to isolate. Read the rest of this entry »
Stem Cells: Embryonic Development
Stem cells, a special type of undifferentiated cells that have the ability to divide indefinitely without losing their properties and may produce specialized cells.
Most cells of an adult (we are referring to man and higher mammals) are often multiplied, except for keeping some tissues such as blood and skin. Muscle cells and fat not normally divide. If you get fat, no more cells is that we actually have the same amount of cells, but these have increased in size.
If a lizard loses its tail, it grows back. In mammals do not. If an individual loses a limb, not redeveloped. Regeneration capacity is limited to healing. However, in virtually all tissues there are cells which, although usually not divided, in particular conditions that can proliferate and regenerate tissue. Artificially has been that these cells have the capacity to reproduce and generate various other tissues, and are called stem cells. Read the rest of this entry »
Stem Cells: Basic Concepts
Definition of stem cells: those cells with the ability to simultaneously self-renewal (ie, produce more stem cells) and cause daughter cells committed to specific development paths, which finally become specialized cell types differentiation.
In the context of the present investigation is to obtain stem cells to remain as such in laboratory culture, and that under certain stimuli can lead to different cell populations.
The zygote (fertilized egg) is a totipotent cell, capable of giving rise to the whole organism. During the first division the embryo is a compact sphere (morula), in which all cells are totipotent, and indeed this is reflected naturally in monozygotic twins. A few days after starting a first specialization, so as to produce a blastocyst, with a surface layer that give rise to the trophoblast, resulting in the placenta, and a cavity almost “hollow” (filled with fluid), which is the inner cell mass (ICM). Read the rest of this entry »