Ever since Ian Wilmut, an unassuming embryologist working at the Roslin Institute just outside Edinburgh stunned the world by cloning the first mammal, Dolly, scientists have been asking: Could humans be cloned in the same way? Putting aside the ethical challenges the question raised, the query turned out to involve more wishful thinking than scientific success. Despite the fact that dozens of other species have been cloned using the technique, called nuclear transfer, human cells have remained stubbornly resistant to the process. Until now. Now that the technique appears to work with human cells, the process could be another source of generating stem cells that may ultimately treat patients, says Mitalipov. His group is especially interested in promoting the technique for treating mitochondrial diseases — these organelles posses a different set of DNA from that contained in the nucleus of cells, and are responsible for generating the energy needed for cells to function. But because they lie outside the nucleus, transferring cells from a patient with mitochondrial diseases into a donor egg that has a healthy set of mitochondrial DNA would generate populations of cells that are free of disease.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 21:18:34 +0000
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