Author: jplucas

A new study has raised doubts about the creation of “ethical” all-purpose stem cells for use in research and treatments. Embryonic stem cells have the power to develop into any of the 220 cell types that make up the different tissues of the human body, but they are mired in controversy because they must be extracted from cannibalised early-stage human embryos.

Embryonic stem cells have the power to develop into any of the 220 cell types that make up the different tissues of the human body, but they are mired in controversy because they must be extracted from aborted foetuses.

A first head-to-head comparison of human embryonic stem cells with ones grown from skin cells, reported Thursday by biologists, revealed early aging and other abnormalities in the less-controversial alternatives.

Madison fire authorities said a University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student burned his right hand after a fire broke out at a laboratory.

The privately-funded Morgridge Institute for Research, part of the public-private Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, plans to recruit 10 principal investigators among 100 researchers and support staffers to be hired over the next five years.

Noted: These true believers come as a flood of new gene crops approaches. The European Union estimates the number of GM traits in crops will quadruple to 120 by 2015. Only half will be made by for-profit companies. Stewart Brand, one of the founders of the back-to-the-land movement, has been arguing fiercely that environmentalists need to drop their anti-GM stance. So has Karl Haro von Mogel, a 27-year-old plant sciences graduate student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, whose blog promotes the technology. “Thereâ??s so much stuff going on that nobody even knows about,” says Von Mogel. “There is this huge potential if we use the science to pursue those things that are possible.”

“Embryonic” and “senescent” arenâ??t supposed to go together any more than “good” and “grief” or other oxymorons, which is why biologist Robert Lanza was “devastated” when he saw what was happening with the human stem cells he and colleagues were trying to grow. Like hundreds of other stem-cell scientists, they had been intrigued and energized by the 2007 discovery that adult cells can be regressed back to an embryonic state simply by inserting four genes into them. The discovery, by scientists at Kyoto University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, seemed to promise a way out of the bitter debates over embryonic-stem-cell research: rather than using human embryos as a source of stem cells, produce them from adult cells.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison chancellor has replied to a letter from Dane County supervisors who are concerned about the UWâ??s Primate Research program.