科學60秒:細胞轉化邁出新一步
來源：滬江聽寫酷
2011-06-11 13:25
One of the dreams of biomedical scientists is to be able to transform adult cells into other kinds of cells. And thus avoid some of ____1____ of working with ____2____ stem cells. Now a research team from McMaster University in Ontario has announced that they’ve been able to transform human skin cells into blood cells. The work was published online on November 7th by the journal Nature.
Other research in this area has required that cells of one type first be returned to a more generally ____3____ stem cell state, which can introduce fresh problems. Once there, the cell is then turned into the type of tissue the researchers seek. But in this case, the scientists avoided the middleman cell. The skin was changed directly into what appears to be functional adult human blood cells. The technique involves ____4____ by a virus vector and exposure to numerous regulatory proteins.
The cells have not been tested in humans to see if they’re truly ____5____ from the home-grown kind. But the research is another step in the effort to create needed cell types from easily available ones.
【視聽版科學小組榮譽出品】
Other research in this area has required that cells of one type first be returned to a more generally ____3____ stem cell state, which can introduce fresh problems. Once there, the cell is then turned into the type of tissue the researchers seek. But in this case, the scientists avoided the middleman cell. The skin was changed directly into what appears to be functional adult human blood cells. The technique involves ____4____ by a virus vector and exposure to numerous regulatory proteins.
The cells have not been tested in humans to see if they’re truly ____5____ from the home-grown kind. But the research is another step in the effort to create needed cell types from easily available ones.
【視聽版科學小組榮譽出品】
the ethical concerns
embryonic
undifferentiated
gene insertion
indistinguishable
生物醫(yī)學領域的科學家有一個夢想，那就是將成年細胞轉化成其他類型的細胞，這就可以避免一些因使用胚胎干細胞引起的倫理問題。如今，安大略省麥克馬斯特大學的一個研發(fā)小組宣稱他們可以將人類皮膚細胞轉化成血細胞。這項研究在11月7日由《自然》雜志在網(wǎng)上發(fā)表。
此領域的其他研究實驗都是先逆分化某種類型的細胞，將其變回一般未分化的干細胞狀態(tài)，而這過程可能會引起一些新問題。一旦細胞逆分化成干細胞，干細胞就可以分化成某種研究者想要的組織。但馬斯特大學研發(fā)小組的科學家卻沒有利用中途轉化的干細胞，而是直接將皮膚細胞轉化成能發(fā)揮功能的成人血細胞。這項技術需要用到植入新基因病毒載體和多種調控蛋白。
科學家尚未證實這些細胞在人體內是否自身血細胞沒有任何區(qū)別，但此次研究在探索簡易獲取所需細胞的道路上邁出了一步。