Word: embryos
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...mature mammalian cell, although it contained all the genetic information required to build an entire organism, locked the cell into being what it already was--skin or bones or soft tissue. The discovery that the DNA of a differentiated cell could be coaxed into behaving like an embryo was a breakthrough of the first order. Scientists are eager to examine that process more closely, hoping that they might discover by what mechanism individual genes are turned off or on. They might even tease out a few clues about the origins of cancer and hereditary diseases like cystic fibrosis and muscular...
...right, it won't be more than a few years until they are identified. And then it will be a simple matter to develop a blood test that could be applied to adults, to children and even to fetuses. Perhaps it will eventually be possible to change an embryo's "gay genes" into straight ones...
...Balaban brushed off the concerns. Human brain transplants would not work, he explains, because the early mammalian embryo is far too fragile for any sort of cell manipulation. Besides, much of human behavior is learned, not hardwired. So what practical results might come from his work? Balaban sees it as a first step toward a very different goal: learning enough about the structure and function of the brain so that when human brain cells are damaged, say by stroke, other cells might be recruited to take over...
...enough when Scottish researchers cloned a sheep named Dolly and commentators started writing about virgin births and Frankenstein. But then one week later, researchers at the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center let it be known that they had cloned a pair of rhesus monkeys, named Neti (for nuclear embryo transfer infant) and Ditto, that squinted in the glare of the TV lights and clung to each other for dear life...
Lost in the rush of legislative activity was the fact that Neti and Ditto were not so much a step toward a brave new world as a diversion. They were produced from embryos, which makes them clones only in the way that identical twins or triplets are clones. The same technique has already been used with sheep, cattle, rabbits, pigs and even humans--although in the last case the embryonic clones were destroyed. What makes Dolly special is that she was cloned from an adult sheep, not from an embryo. She is the only mammal ever born that is identical...