Stem Cells

Sunday, October 21

Stem Cells

Url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-3J6JGN-_Y

Author: EuroStemCells

Published: Feb, 1, 2012


Summary: Stem Cells are fairly new to the world of biology. The discovery has helpped improve our knowledge of the body and helpped improve treatments for many injuries and diseses. Stem cells are cells that dont have a spesific function. When they divide, the cell can choose to divide into a pair of stem cells, or a other specialized cells. They do this because specialized cells reach a point when the dont reproduce. So when they die, a stem cell can take their place. For examle, when a skin cell dies, a stem cell could take its place. Most stem cells can only choose between 2 or 3 specialized cells to divide  into. Embriotic stem cells are a different story. As a baby in the womb, your embyriotic stem cells can choose to divide into many diferent specialized cells. They choose which one by the conditions they were grown in. Stem cells can treat injuries like burns. The surgeon takes skin stem cells from a different part of your body. He then grows more of them. After they have been grown, the cells are transplanted into the burned part of your body. The skin will soon regrow. The flaw with this is the technology to replace sweat glands has not been discovered. So the patient will not sweat in the effected area. That is a summary of this video.

Relavance To Our Class: Stem Cells are cells, which is the unit we are doing right now. Also, the cells divide. In our class we are talking about mitosis and the different stages of it. If stem cells even do use mitosis, there must be a change in either metaphase or anaphase because the cell must change its DNA to become a specialized cell. That is also a connection to our class. We are also are talking about DNA and RNA in this unit.