Talk:Embryonic stem cell

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Juliedobkin.

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Untitled

 * Archive 1: May 15 2006 – July 15 2006

Edits
I have made quite a lot of changes, based on my own judgement as well as through paying attention to the earlier talk page entries. I made many organizational/grammatical fixes, but also removed a lot of irrelevant information from many of the sections. It seemed that there were just random facts interspersed throughout the article that were neither here nor there. My major edits included: Juliedobkin (talk) 07:37, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Providing some more information in the lead. I felt that the summary wasn't inclusive of all that the article covered.
 * Removing irrelevant information from the sections under "Properties" and adding to the sections "Propogation" and "Uses" to make it more easily understandable
 * The subsections under the "Utilizations" heading were poorly organized. I added a section for drug discovery, as well as created a "Clinical Potential" section. In addition to that, I moved the "Clinical Trials" section from under "History" to under "Utilizations" This seems to flow better and make more sense.
 * That said, the "History" tab was quite lacking so I included more time points of embryonic stem cell history, while also reorganizing the section into a bullet list as opposed to just having chronologically placed paragraphs.
 * I changed the "Adverse Effects" tab into "Concerns and Controversy", leaving "Adverse Effects" under it, and adding a subsection titled "Ethical Debate" in order to provide at least some information about the root of the controversy and link it to the relevant wiki article.


 * I changed the "Propagation" section to "Self-Renewal," a more stem-cell specific term. Within this section I included missing information about what kind of media ESCs are grown in for laboratory research. I also added a "Growth" subsection under Properties to address the unique cell cycle of ESCs. Kschach2, 20:06, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

Rewrite
I rearranged a good portion of this article to bring it into better form for describing "Embryonic Stem Cell" and less about the controversy (which has its own wikipedia page). I ended up removing descriptions about the controversy in about 5 different locations, not including the newly added section called "Controversy".

I also tied the Developments and History sections together rather than seperately because once the controversy was removed there wasn't much meat to either section alone.

I'd like to see this article remain more about Embryonic Stem Cells and what they are, how research is being done with them, and why they are of scientific interest. I feel the current article is still lacking in non-human information (researchers have been using mouse and other Embryonic Stem Cells for much more than just the latest bits related to HESC research). The history section behind ESCs is really weak also in that regard. There's people working with MESC...then HESC...then the last 4 years of developments. There needs to be some work done to better describe how biology found ESCs and worked all the way up until we started wanting to use HESC for medical research.

I'll add a to-do list to this page to try and help keep the focus on creating an encyclopedia/reference article on ESCs and less on the controversy or other goings-on that distract from the facts about ESCs specifically. ju66l3r 20:27, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

What I think would help in a re-write
I think this page is quite poor for a science Wiki page that is on such a hot topic. Many of the "known facts" about ES cells are based on mouse experiments, but this page doesn't always distinguish between the mouse model and the human condition.

I think breathing up the article into mouse and human sections would make things a bit more clear. Also, the main reason for interest in ES cells has always been their application to stem cell treatments, and I think the link to this page could be made stronger. Dr Aaron 05:42, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Recent Controversial Research, reported in Nature
In summary, I would like to revert to my edits for Revision as of 03:25, 25 August 2006.

The article at has generated some misunderstandings. It is not true that this is a technique proven safe to human fetuses: The tests performed actually destroyed the fetuses in the experiment. Also, it's not true that preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) has been demonstrated safe in human fetuses: It was in fact demonstrated safe only in mice, in another study.

I had included a link to Nature that showed the opposing viewpoints, but Badreligion consistently removes the opposing viewpoints. Unfortunately, he throws out the baby along with the bath water: Besides removing opposing viewpoints, he is removing a number of great references, including a great link to the entire research paper. He hasn't sufficiently researched this issue.

Research on any viewpoints contrary to the above will show they are contained in pop media news, which misunderstood information that was not presented correctly in the first place. Some references:
 * http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/25/AR2006082501248.html
 * http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=M2U3ZTNhYWZmZTU5ZWQzYWViYTZjNzk1NWVjODFlNWE=
 * http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5696557

I'm making the revert to correct misstatements such as: "his team, who headed the research, had found a way to extract stem cells without destroying the actual embryo.", "Excising a cell at this point doesn't interfere with the embryo's development.", and "The approach described here does not involve the destruction of an embryo, nor does the biopsied cell ever develop into an embryo at any point."

These are all either very incorrect, or possibly incorrect and definitely unproven.

Israel Steinmetz 05:18, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to point out that this article is for information about embryonic stem cells...what they are, where they come from, how they are interesting/important. It should not be about the controversy over stem cell research methodologies. Leave that for stem cell controversy. Also, www.lifenews.com is not a reliable source, the same way a company blog is not a reliable source and using them to apply weasel words into text about a technique in order to force a controversy to what is reported as research results isn't acceptable editing...again, feel free to weasel away over at stem cell controversy. Thanks. ju66l3r 21:33, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

link at the top of this page needed...
... to direct users looking to read about stem cell controversy to the appropriate page. Or at least mention it (with link) in the fist paragraph. I would do the first option, but I don't know how. Oplossing is duidelijk 19:34, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Not all embryonic stem cell lines are created equal
Sun, Südhof and their colleagues found that the two ES cell lines differentiated into two distinct types of neurons that are actually found in different parts of the brain. Brian Pearson 02:23, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

External Link Video Add
I'd like to add a video series "Understanding Biomedical Research Series" produced by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. This series illuminates how advances in molecular biology and information science are changing our views of biology and human medicine. Some of the videos in this series includes "Understanding Embryonic Stem Cells," "Coaxing Embryonic Stem Cells," "Adult Stem Cells and Regeneration," and "Stem Cells and the End of Aging." The link is http://www.researchchannel.org/prog/displayseries.aspx?pID=868&fID=1649 (this does not automatically open a video). Please let me know what you think. --ResearchChannel 04:10, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Stem cell pluripotent vs. totipotent
I don't know how to create a new section but embryonic stem cells are TOTIPOTENT not pluripotent - ADULT stem cells are pluripotent. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.251.225.44 (talk) 22:55, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Embryonic stem cells are not totipotent. Totipotent cells are capable of forming the entire organism. So far the only cells that can do that are embryos. Embryonic stem cells are derived from the inner cell mass of the blastocyst, consequently they do not contain any trophoectoderm (cells that make the placenta). They can form all three germ layers so they are pluripotent. Adult stem cells are rarely pluripotent, most are lineage restricted and only capable of forming cell types within a single germ layer or less. See the papers cited on this subject in the article on adult stem cells. Id711 04:20, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Your response is indeed quite correct. SteveD 1st June 2008. 12:18 am. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.179.90.52 (talk) 14:18, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

This article needs incorporating the following things
1. The article addresses some research done on mice. It does not say how that could lead to the next step of researching on animals including humans. The goal is to cure human diseases which do not have cure now.

2. Which are the nations currently working on Embryonic stem cell research? How are they working together?

3. How is US going to lead on this after Obama's approving the Embryonic stem cell research? Which are the institutes here in US and abroad working on this?

Athos, Porthos, and Aramis (talk) 00:13, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Change in wording in "Potential method for new cell line derivation"
The first paragraph in this section discusses a method to remove embryonic stem cells from an inner cell mass without killing the embryo (although it seems they did not try to actually grow the embryos afterwards so I'm hesistant about their claim). Then the next few paragraphs talk about induced pluripotent stem cells, which at first made me think that it was referring to the method in the first paragraph. These should be two separate sections. Given the confusing sentence later on beginning with "However, as a first indication that the induced pluripotent stem cell (iPS) cell technology can in rapid succession lead to new cures", maybe the whole section should be revamped. I'm being cautious and not doing the revamp myself because I want to toss it out there and see what others think. I consider myself to be fairly knowledgeable on the subject; I will graduate in a couple of months with a bachelor's degree in cell/tissue bioengineering. Jojojlj (talk) 02:21, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Potential vs Actual Results
All I can see is "potential this" and "potential that". I'm sure I'll have to go back and re-read this article, but isn't there any actual, proven benefit to using embryonic stem cells? And how does this compare to the research in adult stem cells? Haven't read that article, yet. I know that there is much misinformation going around the media about the differences between embryonic and adult stem cells. And I think that pointing out the differences and the usefulness of each type would make a good foundation for this article. Does anyone have good source recommendations for this info? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Danindenver (talk • contribs) 07:33, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

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Please add info on 2022 synthetic embryos from embryonic stem cells
I don't know how info on this should be added to the article, but think it probably should at least be mentioned (with a wikilink) somewhere in the article, maybe in the section "History". It's featured in 2022 in science like so:

"In two separate studies – the other published on 1 August, two teams report the achievement of synthetic embryos grown from mice embryonic stem cells (with one study also using other stem cells), without sperm or eggs, with natural-like development and some surviving until day 8.5 where early organogenesis, including formation of foundations of a brain, occurs. They grew in vitro and subsequently ex utero in an artificial womb."

Prototyperspective (talk) 12:18, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Developmental and Molecular Biology Spring 2023
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