• Question: What are stem cells?

    Asked by yooda to Bob, Katie, Nisha, Sallie, Vee on 27 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Sallie Baxendale

      Sallie Baxendale answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      Stem cells are one kind of cell found in your body. They are like “blank” cells. They turn into the different cells in your body. Stem cells can turn into skin, blood, bone, and brain cells. People are very excited about stem cell reserach because we hope that we will be able to inject these blank cells into areas that have been damaged and that they will be able to repair the damage. this would be amazing for people who have dementia or who have broken their back and become paralysed

    • Photo: Vee Mitchell

      Vee Mitchell answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      Stem cells as Sally says are like blank cells (that’s a really good description) – they receive signals from other cells around them which can turn them into whatever cells are needed to fix a problem such as replacing cells which have been damage – it’s your bodies way of repairing itself and replacing worn out cells. Scientists are tyring to understand how to turn stem cells into all sorts of different cells that make up your body so they can use them to treat diseases. The main areas that they are already starting to see some success is to make heart cells to repair damage caused by heart disease. The beauty of using Stem cells is that you can take them from the patient so there is no problem with rejecting the treatment that you see with organ transplants.

    • Photo: Bob Bonwick

      Bob Bonwick answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      What kind? There Are many. The most useful ones are omnipotent or totipotent stem cells. They’d guys havent decided what they want to be in life yet. With a little encouragement from outside sources, a bit like parents, teachers and careers advisors, these cells can become anything. Given the right conditions they can do anything they are “programmed” to do. After a while they get to a point where they can only go forward in their life, they have lost the ability to change their career as it were. We call these pluripotent stem cells, they have a destiny and they can only go one of a few ways. Again once they get so far on they become unipotent, or single use. Some times they can go back, get a new job in life, there are called non terminally differentiated stem cells and can change their job once before they come to an end.

Comments