The Blog of Science

For the first time, stem cells from human embryos have been obtained without destroying the embryo from which they come. The breakthrough overcomes the main objection to the ethics of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research - the embryos must be killed to get hES cells.
The new method removes a single cell from the embryo […]

DNA testing to establish ancestry are becoming very popular and are being offered by several companies. As the knowledge about the genetic composition of human populations accumulates, the manufacturers are including more markers to their tests in order to make them more accurate and span more ancestral lineages.
Geneticists from the Department of Genetics, University of […]

Recent research carried out by Lawrence Chan and coworkers at Baylor College of Medicine brings new hopes in the battle against diabetes, this time through gene therapy procedures done on mice.
What is gene therapy?
The idea about gene therapy consists of ‘repairing’ malfunctioning cells by introducing a […]

Researchers from Heinrich Pette Institute of Experimental Virology and Immunology at Hamburg produced a special enzyme able to “cure” HIV-infected human lymphocytes in laboratory assays. The study, published in Science constitutes a potential advancement in the struggle against HIV-AIDS. So far, experts assumed that the infection with the Human Immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was irreversible because […]

What are stem cells?
The vast majority of our cells are in a state known as ‘differentiated’, which means that they cannot change their cell type. For example, a neuron cannot change into a blood cell, and a skin cell will not become a pancreatic cell. Cells become what they are during embryogenesis from ‘undifferentiated’, or […]

Research on stem cells is quickly generating promising avenues for the treatment of many illnesses that had no known cure so far. Briefly, scientists are trying to use stem cells to repair or replace cells lost or damaged by disease or congenital defects. Examples for the current targets of research are red and white blood […]