During the early life and the growth of the body, stem cells can develop into several types of cells. They serve in many tissues as an internal repair system and are divided mainly without the limit to refill the other cells till the death of the person or an animal. Every new cell after the division of stem cell has the possibility to become another cell type or remain the same stem cell. When the stem cells become another cell type, then it has more special functions like red blood cell, a muscle cell or the brain cell.
The importance of stem cells for living organisms is inevitable. There are many reasons behind this. In blastocyst, which is a 3-5 days old embryo, the entire body is raised by the inner cells. It includes various types of specialized cells and organs like lungs, sperm, skin, eggs, heart, and other tissues. The replacement of cells which are lost due to normal injury, wear, and tear or disease is generated by the adult stem cells of distinct populations in some tissues like muscle, bone marrow, and brain.
New potentials are offered by the stem cells for the treatment of diseases like heart diseases or diabetes due to distinct regenerative ability. Research work is still going on in the clinic and laboratories to understand the cell-based therapies of the stem cells for the treatment of diseases which are referred as reparative or regenerative medicine. New drugs are screening, and model systems are developing with the help of stem cells in the laboratory by the scientists. Stem cells are not like other types of body cells. General properties of stem cells are the capability of renewing and dividing for a long period, rise into a specialized cell, and tissue-specific structure is not present in stem cells so they are unspecialized
Stem cells are grown in the laboratory. This process is called cell culture. HESCs (Human Embryonic Stem Cells) are generated when cells are transferred into the plastic culture dish from the preimplantation-stage of the embryo which contains a broth nutrient called culture medium. Cells are divided and spread on the culture dish. Among the differentiated cells, the adult stem cell is considered undifferentiated in the tissue or an organ. An adult stem cell has an ability to renew and differentiate itself to produce few or all the main specialized cell types of an organ or tissue.
At many stages of an embryonic stem cell generation, the cell is tested to check whether they have the basic properties of the embryonic stem cells or not. This process is known as characterization. Scientists who are doing research on the embryonic stem cells of human have not agreed yet on the standard battery tests which are used to measure the fundamental properties of the cells. Many types of tests are used in the laboratory such as sub-culturing and growing a stem cell for months, techniques to produce the particular surface for the cell which is produced typically by the undifferentiated cells, determining the re-growth sub-culturing of cells after freezing, melting, and re-plating, or examination of chromosomes to check if the chromosomes are damaged or their number has changed using a microscope. This is done under the microscope and does not detect the genetic changes in a cell.
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