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Stem Cells

During the 1800's scientists recognized that the cells in the human body were the basic building blocks of life and that cells were able to produce other cells. This was a very important discovery because it lead to further research and by the early 1900's scientists in Europe came to find out that all blood cells come from one particular "stem cell". Recently this type of research has been able to lead to new discoveries which have lead to bone marrow transplants that have helped to combat a number of diseases. Researchers at both the University of Wisconsin and John Hopkins University, who in 1998, isolated and grew stem cells from human embryos and germ cells, made the most prolific discovery of late. By late 1999 and early 2000, researchers discovered that of they manipulated tissues in adult mice; they could develop unsuspected cell types that led them to believe that stem cells could help to develop other cells, such as liver and nerve cells.
After that brief history lesson it is best to now delve into what stem cell research is all about and what it hopes to accomplish. Research on stem cells is advancing knowledge about how an organism develops from a single cell and how healthy cells replace damaged cells in adult organisms. This promising area of science is also leading scientists to investigate the possibility of cell-based therapies to treat disease, which is often referred to as regenerative or reparative medicine. Although the area of stem cell research is very massive and it is impossible to delve completely into the phenomenon of this type of research, the following is a short attempt to describe the fundamentals of stem cell research. Stem cells are cells that can either divide to produce more stem cells or, under appropriate conditions, can become specialized by differentiating into various cell types, such as nerve and muscle. There are two important characteristics of stem cells, which are as follows; stem cells are unspecialized cells...