{"id":511,"date":"2018-04-10T12:22:21","date_gmt":"2018-04-10T16:22:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ethillery.com\/?p=511"},"modified":"2018-04-10T17:18:37","modified_gmt":"2018-04-10T21:18:37","slug":"some-freakishly-new-biology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ethillery.com\/index.php\/2018\/04\/10\/some-freakishly-new-biology\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Freakishly New Biology"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Humans will be living a lot longer.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ethillery.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Stem-300x188.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"188\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-512\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ethillery.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Stem-300x188.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.ethillery.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Stem.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Stem cells, the nakedess cell there is, have amazing potential when it comes to healing, transplant surgery, and way more.  In a way, they&#8217;re ancestral cells from which the rest of our cells proliferate.  <\/p>\n<p>Japan was leading the way in stem cell research, but it was a little scarier (and Resident Evil-ish, if you want to take it there) in that their research breakthroughs involved viral mechanisms to break down the programming of skin cells &#8211; that is to say, the stuff that tells the skin cell to be a skin cell &#8211; which degenerates them back into a stem cell.  <\/p>\n<p>(Resident Evil just also adds some t-virus lore that makes horror-mutations possible. In real life? They&#8217;re just super likely to form tumors.  No big deal.)<\/p>\n<p>But now we have something better, thanks to Australia:  <\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;ve got a group of researchers who&#8217;ve shown the ability to develop stem cells FROM BONE AND FAT CELLS. As I&#8217;m a yankee, I have a hard time believing that&#8217;s something we have in mega-short supply. They&#8217;re also able to do this without viral loading, but with two chemicals (I believe one is a catalyst, and the other&#8217;s a hormone: 5-Azacytidine and Factor-AB for geeks who want to be specific) which follows a similar (but different) transition course which, over weeks, tells those cell to revert back into a specialized stem cell that&#8217;s just so goddang flexible.  Science press articles might as well start calling it &#8220;Body putty&#8221; cause results (called iMS cells) are sold like you can slap these cells into your spine, and presto-chango! Instant nerve repair.<\/p>\n<p>It wont work exactly like that, but still, frikkin amazing.<\/p>\n<p>And my silly way of thinking makes me wonder, if we learned about viruses and turned ghouls into zombies&#8230;<br \/>\nWhat&#8217;s next? <\/p>\n<p>Because every year, in terms of scientific capability, it&#8217;s still fair to say that humans are advancing faster than ever. So just how many science fiction stories will need to find a new category? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Humans will be living a lot longer. Stem cells, the nakedess cell there is, have amazing potential when it comes to healing, transplant surgery, and way more. In a way, they&#8217;re ancestral cells from which the rest of our cells proliferate. Japan was leading the way in stem cell research, but it was a little [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ethillery.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ethillery.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ethillery.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethillery.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethillery.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethillery.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":515,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethillery.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511\/revisions\/515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ethillery.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethillery.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethillery.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}