this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
194 points (98.0% liked)
Technology
59578 readers
6091 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Where would they get forebrain neurons if they didn't have access to baby foreskin...?
Blood cells. In my lab we used peripheral blood mononuclear cells. Harvesting from baby foreskin is obsolete technology, imo, but the cells are already in the cell bank, so people use 'em.
Very freakin cool dude. Thanks for the read and knowledge!
Blood cells are not neurons though, so the extra step of reprogramming them (epigenetically?) perhaps could use, also, some elaboration
Whether you're using blood cells or fibroblasts (which is what's taken from foreskin, and can come from a simple skin punch too) you give the cells a big blast of growth factors trust turn on genes that are expressed very very early in gestation, back when a fertilized zygote is starting to turn into all the different cell types in the body. These are induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSCs). Then you can freeze these, and use them to make neurons, cardiac cells, pancreatic cells, whatever.
There are techniques for reprogramming that bypass this by going from blood or fibroblasts to neurons or something. This is called direct reprogramming. It's more complicated and less mature technology, though, so it's not practical for most cases.