Can We Clone a Wolly Mammoth?

Thanks to the borrowing nature of squirrels and their nack for hiding treasures, scientists have been able reconstruct a 30,000 years old flower. According to the online article written by Valdimir Isachenkov for the Associated Press, Svetlana Yashina of the Institure of Cell Biophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences used the hidden contents of a squirrel den found 125 feet below the surface in the Siberian permafrost, which contained fruit and seed,s to regenerate a flower from the tissue found inside. Russian scientists were able to fully construct the entire plant known as Sylene stenophylla.

It seems that the Siberian permafrost is a natural depository for everything that lived--- 30,000 years ago and more. Continued research into the permafrost will reveal a great deal of knowledge about our past. Of the reconstructed plant, Svetlana Yashina, who led the regeneration effort, said the new plant looks very similar one found in northeastern Siberia currently.

After investigating dozens of these fossil burrows located in ice deposits scients are confident of the future finds in the ice. The various layers of ice have yielded bones from large mammals, bison, deer, and a horse.
The study suggests that tissue can survive for thousands of years in the layers. The frozen ice acts as a tomd for all it envelopes. The research team hopes to find tissue of a mammoth so that a regeneration of a mammoth can be reconstructed.

What secrets await the scientists searching the cold of Siberia. Frozen in time, the contents of the den have given great promise to the scientific world. I think in the future we will be very surprised at the data found deep within the layers of this planet. Stored as sa harddrive from the past like a USB or jumpdrive hidden for all to find. What useful information can be gleaned from this experience?

Malnutrition, Hunger, and Finally Starvation

            Grim is the picture of someone starving to death.  As the body attempts to provide energy to the heart and lungs it literally eats its own muscle and tissues in a process termed catabolysis.  Victims of starvation are often too weak to sense thirst, and therefore become dehydrated.
All movements become painful due to atrophy of the muscles, and due to dry, cracked skin caused by severe dehydration. With a weakened body, diseases are commonplace. Fungi, for example, often grow under the esophagus, making swallowing unbearably painful.
The energy deficiency inherent in starvation causes fatigue and renders the victim more apathetic over time. As the starving person becomes too weak to move or even eat, his or her interaction with the surroundings diminishes.

            According to the World Health Organization hunger the single gravest threat to the world's public health. The WHO states that malnutrition is by far the biggest contributor to child mortality. Six million children die of hunger every year. Starvation is unacceptable in a society which has the resources to solve this critical problem. Are we to become known as the planet that died of starvation because we were too stupid or greedy to implement a solution? Or is the problem of starvation based on a ‘no money, no food’ attitude.

            A laboratory in the Netherlands may just have the answer to providing food for future generations. Imagine the reality of a yellow-pink sliver, the size of a corn plaster, as is the state-of-the-art in lab-grown meat and a milestone on the path to the world's first burger made from stem cells. A hamburger made from stem cells!
            In a recent online article, and according to Dr. Mark Post of Maastricht University, a complete burger has been created and will be publicly unveiled soon. Dr. Post hopes the Fat Duck restaurant in Berkshire, will cook the offering for a celebrity taster as yet unnamed. The project, funded by a wealthy, anonymous, individual aims to slash the number of cattle farmed for food, and in doing so reduce one of the major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. Dr. Post claims, “Meat demand is going to double in the next 40 years and right now we are using 70% of all our agricultural capacity to grow meat through livestock."
            It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand the problems we face with food consumption and supply and demand. Below is a diagram of how the lab grown meat is grown.

 

 The inefficiency of cows and other animals in the production of meat, from farm to table, for a population expected to double in size is a problem. Post is focusing on making beef burgers from stem cells because cows are among the least efficient animals at converting the food they eat into food for humans.

"Cows and pigs have an efficiency rate of about 15%, which is pretty inefficient. Chickens are more efficient and fish even more," Post said. "If we can raise the efficiency from 15% to 50% it would be a tremendous leap forward." Post said he could theoretically increase the number of burgers made from a single cow from 100 to 100m. "That means we could reduce the number of livestock we use by 1m," he said. According to Dr. Post, “If lab-grown meat mimics farmed meat perfectly” – and Post admits it may not – the meat could become a premium product just as free range and organic items have.

            I am of the opinion that we should leave no stone unturned in the area of research for food supplies. No food, no life. I believe that in the future all food will be grown in the lab. I also promote the idea of lab-grown food. No longer can we afford to mine food from cows and other animals. What are we waiting on?

Stem Cell Research: Like

                After reading an article about a recent trial study taking place concerning stem cells and blindness, I came to realize how many questions I had about the ins and outs of stem cells. Questions like what exactly are stem cells? Where do stem cells come from and how can they help humans? The latter part of this question can be answered by reading the recent online article by Alice Park titled, “Early Success in Human Embryonic Stem Cell trial to Treat Blindness,” (http://healthland.time.com/2012/01/24/early-success-in-a-human-embryonic-stem-cell-trial-to-treat-blindness/), which suggests promising results have been reached in a recent trial concerning the use of embryonic stem cells.

            Embryonic stem cells are extracted directly from an embryo before the embryo's cells begin to differentiate and according to Medical.net and can be defined as a human pluripotent stem cell, one of the cells that are self-replicating, and are derived from human embryos or human fetal tissue, and are known to develop into cells and tissues of the three primary germ layers. Although human pluripotent stem cells can be derived from embryos or fetal tissue, such stem cells are not embryos. "Self-replicating" means the cell can divide and to form cells indistinguishable from it. The "three primary germ layers" -- called the ectoderm, mesoderm, and endoderm -- are the primary layers of cells in the embryo from which all tissues and organs develop.
            According to Alice park, researchers from the UCLA Jules Stein Eye Institute “launched a first-ever study” to show that stem cells may help to reverse patients’ disease and in this case blindness. Can you imagine healing blindness! The safety trial, which monitored the results after 2 patients suffering from progressive blindness were injected with retinal cells derived from embryonic stem cells, reported small improvements. According to Dr. Steven Schwartz, lead author of the paper and director of the Diabetic Eye Disease and Retinal Vascular Center at UCLA, “It opens the door for multiple strategies in the field.”
            In short, the recent trial, which basically injected retinal cells into humans, gives evidence and encouragement for the scientific community and the field of regenerative medicine. I’m sure that Sue Freeman, age 78 and 1 of the two initial patients, is glad the research is available   the point of this post is to argue for results of stem cell research.  So what is the controversy all about? Those who value human life from the point of conception, oppose embryonic stem cell research because the extraction of stem cells from this type of an embryo requires its destruction. In other words, it requires that a human life be killed. Some believe this to be the same as murder. Against this, embryonic research advocates argue that the tiny blastocyst has no human features. Further, new stem cell lines already exist due to the common practice of in vitro fertilization. Research advocates conclude that many fertilized human cells have already been banked, but are not being made available for research. Advocates of embryonic stem cell research claim new human lives will not be created for the sole purpose of experimentation.

Others argue against such research on medical grounds. Mice treated for Parkinson's with embryonic stem cells have died from brain tumors in as much as 20% of cases. Embryonic stem cells stored over time have been shown to create the type of chromosomal anomalies that create cancer cells. So what is the answer? I think we can no longer grapple with childish hobgoblins of the mind, but we are called to act as accountable responsible stewards of humanity---help those in need of help!

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