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You are here: Home / Science & Technology / Weekend Stem Cell Thread

Weekend Stem Cell Thread

by Tim F|  December 30, 200712:45 am| 31 Comments

This post is in: Science & Technology

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Along with writing 2001: A Space Odyssey, proposing the geosynchronous satellite and a questionable pedophilia charge, Arthur C. Clarke once famously observed that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Clarke undoubtedly had in mind a visitor from the mid 19th century or earlier, but things move faster now. For example, the other day I remarked to an undergraduate student on her third reading through Ender’s Game that the book was more than just a cool read; as far as I can tell Card predicted the internet and the town square zeitgeist of blogging almost verbatim before anybody else. She gave me a quizzical look. After a minute I realized that she had no tangible sense that people wrote books before email and instant chat. I suppose I would have a similar reaction to a book predicting the telephone.

Point being that Ray Kurtzweil and Moore of Moore’s law had it right. While I’m only a tangential expert in one topic and not any sort of expert in the other, stem cells and metamaterials jump out as two techs with the same kind of game-changing potential as radio and the internet. Growing back limbs or damaged organs, bringing back motor control to paraplegics, cloaking devices, “perfect” microscopes that can (theoretically) magnify down to infinity all seem like silly science-fiction stuff. All but the microscope show up as plot devices in the Harry Potter books. Yet these applications have all passed the proof-of-principle stage.

Of course a proof-of-principle is not the same as an invisible plane. Take that astounding report that scientists could make embryonic-like stem cells out of ordinary adult skin cells. If that isn’t magic, right? There was some debate about the usefulness of the technique, which I deferred since the technical details were not available to me yet.

Well, the paper came out in the print magazine just before Christmas and the skeptics were right. The technique knocks in four genes using a lentivirus vector using (as far as I can tell) artificial promoters, and one of the genes (c-myc) is a doozy of a cancer gene. That won’t help with FDA approval.

The stem cell news isn’t even a little bad, unless you expect difficult problems to solve themselves in one step. In fact other news in the same vein is just awesome. In a good example of the unexpected new angles that stem cell treatment will take, doctors working in a mouse model have developed an entirely new way to treat sickle cell anemia.

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31Comments

  1. 1.

    TheFountainHead

    December 30, 2007 at 1:15 am

    Stem Cells. Science. w00t!

  2. 2.

    crayz

    December 30, 2007 at 2:12 am

    We’ve got about 20 years left until the singularity, unless oil or Moore’s law runs out first. Enjoy it while it lasts

  3. 3.

    myiq2xu

    December 30, 2007 at 2:15 am

    The Earh is 6000 years old and flat, the moon is made of green cheese and the moon landings were faked, Jeebus rode on a dinosaur, little devils cause disease, horoscopes, numerology, ouija boards and tarot cards really work.

    Heaven is floating in the clouds above the earth and hell is somewhere underground. The sun revolves around the Earth, Pi equals 3 and Tim is gonna burn for blasphemy.

    (sticks fingers in ears) I’m not listening to anymore lies and mumbo jumbo Lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala

  4. 4.

    Dave Irwin

    December 30, 2007 at 2:43 am

    That’s some exciting stuff. I hope they get cracking on it.

    Oh yeah, students will surprise you with what they don’t know. I am beginning the think that Curltural Literacy of some sort is a good idea.

  5. 5.

    Michael D.

    December 30, 2007 at 3:00 am

    The technique knocks in four genes using a lentivirus vector using (as far as I can tell) artificial promoters, and one of the genes (c-myc) is a doozy of a cancer gene.

    Duh. You say this like it’s not common knowledge! :-)

  6. 6.

    Geoduck

    December 30, 2007 at 5:19 am

    Check out Murray Leinster’s short story “A Logic Named Joe”, which all the way back in 1946 predicted (essentiallly) personal computers and the Internet.

  7. 7.

    The Grandest Panjandrum

    December 30, 2007 at 8:47 am

    I have but a cursory understanding of stem cell research so my questions are elementary at best.
    (1)Is the Sickle Cell therapy discussed in the LA Times article dependent upon using the stem cells reprogrammed from adult stem cells of a particular individual? Because the cancer issue remains.

    Researchers will also need to overcome some key technical hurdles, including finding a way to reprogram adult cells without using genes and viruses that could cause cancer.

    (2)Would, in theory, embryonic stem cells harvested from a third party be useful in this case?

    In other words how does the Bush policy on federal funding effect this particular research? And, furthermore, how would a change in that policy, allowing for use of additional stem cell lines effect the broader field of stem research? Is the limiting factor funding for basic research?

  8. 8.

    RSA

    December 30, 2007 at 9:35 am

    as far as I can tell Card predicted the internet and the town square zeitgeist of blogging almost verbatim before anybody else.

    Blogging, maybe, but aside from Geoduck’s observation, Card’s description of the Internet in 1985 is not all that impressive given the creation of ARPANET in the late ’60s, based on J. C. R. Licklider’s description of an Intergalactic Computer Network in 1962. The conceptual history of the Internet is commonly traced back to Vannevar Bush’s memex, described in “As We May Think”, an article that appeared in Atlantic Monthly in 1945. (Imagine a World Wide Web based on microfiche and pneumatic tubes. . .)

  9. 9.

    RSA

    December 30, 2007 at 9:44 am

    Oh, I meant to add that Card’s description of the WIggins kids’ deployment of their essays struck me as being much closer to Usenet than the World Wide Web, if I remember what I was thinking when I read it.

  10. 10.

    Tim F.

    December 30, 2007 at 9:48 am

    RSA, the original novella on which the book was based was published in 1977.

  11. 11.

    RSA

    December 30, 2007 at 9:53 am

    Oops, I didn’t know that. Still, in the spirit of bloggy arrogance, I’ll assert that resemblances between science fiction predictions and the real world are generally no more than accidents. :-)

  12. 12.

    k

    December 30, 2007 at 10:13 am

    You haven’t looked at the FDA lately, have you?

  13. 13.

    Mark Gisleson

    December 30, 2007 at 11:22 am

    You give Card far too much credit, much like a Bill Shatner cable special on the science of Star Trek.

    Wade through enough science fiction and you’ll find that everything was predicted, but usually in a completely-missed-the-boat way, a la Nostradamus.

    You could as easily read the works of Karl Marx and say that he predicted Bush, and, in fact he did, or at least to the degree that Scott Orson Card ever predicted anything.

  14. 14.

    demimondian

    December 30, 2007 at 11:23 am

    I’m wondering how the Alabama researchers suppressed c-myc in their transformed cells. Whatever else, that’s a fascinating idea — transform the cells, stabilize them as stem cells, and let the transformants revert to wild type by losing their insertions over time.

    The other interesting thing about the iSC work is that it lends considerable credence to the cancer stem cell theories which have recently become popular. (Yes, I’m skeptical about them, too. Sorry, Tim; I distrust “convenient, clean, and simple” explanations in biology.) If activation of c-myc provides a significant transformation towards stem cell status, then it would naturally be an oncogene, which would be an elegant and beautiful explanation of its behavior.

  15. 15.

    srv

    December 30, 2007 at 12:20 pm

    Gibson’s Neuromancer had all that bioware, memetic materials and matrix stuff also (not that it was all original, but most of it was). Haven’t read the novella to know how much changed between 1977 and 1985. Always assumed a lot of details did.

    I’m surprised how many young ones “get” Enders and Neuromancer even though you’d think they’d have context problems.

  16. 16.

    Ted

    December 30, 2007 at 12:35 pm

    Along with writing 2001: A Space Odyssey, proposing the geosynchronous satellite and a questionable pedophilia charge, Arthur C. Clarke once famously observed that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

    That charge was never backed up with anything, and popped out just in time to do damage (indeed postpone) to his knighthood or whatever it was ‘Prince’ Charles was traveling to Sri Lanka for.

    Now as to whether he’s gay (when asked, he makes pithy non-answers), we’ll never know until his memoirs are published. The bastard declared that they couldn’t be published until 50 years after his death.

  17. 17.

    Haltelcere

    December 30, 2007 at 12:35 pm

    Arthur C. Clarke once famously observed that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

    Hence the Religious Wrong can claim with a strait face that the Earth is only 6000 years old, that Evolution is a lie perpetuated by the Devil, etc. When technology and scientific advances progress past one’s understanding, then it is easy to dismiss those progresses that interfere with a person’s beliefs.

    The Religious Wrong isn’t the only group of people to succumb to this – think back to the hysteria of Y2K. The people most worried about a global catastrophe were those who least understood computers, power plants, etc.

  18. 18.

    demimondian

    December 30, 2007 at 12:43 pm

    I’ve always assumed Clarke was gay, and he’s the world’s best answer to “and who cares”? (Turing’s not; he’s the world’s best answer to “Incalculable damage to whom?”)

  19. 19.

    Bob Munck

    December 30, 2007 at 3:40 pm

    RSA, the original novella on which the book was based was published in 1977.

    How could I ignore that challenge? My Analog subscription runs back to 1956.

    So I found August 1977 and skimmed through Ender’s Game (pp 100-134). Sorry, it’s entirely about Ender’s battles, up to the last one against the Buggers. Nothing about the world outside the battle school, and nothing about Valentine, Peter, etc. The stuff that resembles the Internet didn’t appear until 1985, after we’d had a decade or more of mailing lists, RFCs, usenet, forums, etc. A blog comment section and a usenet thread are basically indistinguishable.

    So I’m afraid that Card didn’t really predict much of anything. If you want prediction, take a look at Brunner’s Shockwave Rider. For current prediction, Vinge’s Rainbows End.

  20. 20.

    Brendan

    December 30, 2007 at 6:09 pm

    … a questionable pedophilia charge …

    Then why mention it? You taking blogging lessons from Mickey Kaus?

  21. 21.

    demimondian

    December 30, 2007 at 6:09 pm

    A blog comment section and a usenet thread are basically indistinguishable.

    Two words: kill file.

  22. 22.

    RSA

    December 30, 2007 at 7:21 pm

    I’ve often wished for gnus-style filtering. I haven’t used Emacs to browse the Web for years, though.

  23. 23.

    Visible

    December 30, 2007 at 8:13 pm

    Metamaterials are smoke and mirrors. With a perfect metamaterial, you can only be “invisible” either from precisely one direction or at precisely one frequency. What’s more, they only occur in highly dissipative systems, making their already limited invisibility inherently imperfect.

    That said, biology looks neat-o.

  24. 24.

    Dave Irwin

    December 31, 2007 at 4:51 am

    If pig DNA is added to the soup we then are vulnreable to bovine diseases, which can be colorful. Are they included?

  25. 25.

    liberal

    December 31, 2007 at 1:29 pm

    Martin Gardner once claimed that H. G. Wells essentially predicted the internet and WWW:
    “The Internet: a world brain?”

  26. 26.

    liberal

    December 31, 2007 at 1:30 pm

    Huh. It didn’t like my link code.
    Try again:
    The Internet: a world brain?

  27. 27.

    BlogReeder

    December 31, 2007 at 2:56 pm

    In other words how does the Bush policy on federal funding effect this particular research?

    I would think that stem cells from harvested adult skin cells is not embryonic stem cell research. By definition. But who knows how a particular policy is explicitly written.

  28. 28.

    ViVeLaMe

    December 31, 2007 at 5:16 pm

    Not one of the SciFi writers mentionned so far hold a candle to John Brunner. Try the veal!

  29. 29.

    ViVeLaMe

    December 31, 2007 at 5:19 pm

    Woops, Bob Munck beat me to it. Seconded.

  30. 30.

    Dr. R. Rajaraman

    January 3, 2008 at 5:47 pm

    My experience with cells tell me that introduction of foreign genes will induce senescence, from which the cell has to escape via neosis (one can find about neosis and cancer from the internet), which will definitely lead to cancer sooner or later.

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  1. Cardgames collection cards » Blog Archive » Weekend Stem Cell Thread says:
    February 2, 2008 at 2:21 pm

    […] Along with writing 2001: A Space Odyssey, proposing the geosynchronous satellite and a questionable pedophilia charge, Arthur C. Clarke once famously observed that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Clarke undoubtedly had in mind a visitor from the mid 19th century or earlier, but things move faster now. For example, the other day I remarked to an undergraduate student on her third reading through Enders Game that the book was more than just a cool read; as f source: Weekend Stem Cell Thread, Balloon Juice […]

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