Researchers Unveil Genome of 'Immortal' Cell Line Derived From Cancer Victim 81
vinces99 writes "Scientists have unveiled a comprehensive portrait of the genome of the world's first immortal cell line, known as HeLa, derived in 1951 from an aggressive cervical cancer that killed Henrietta Lacks, a 31-year-old African-American woman. The cells, taken without her or her family's knowledge, were pivotal in developing the polio vaccine, in vitro fertilization and cloning, and were the subject of a 2010 New York Times best-seller 'The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.' The Lacks family has never been compensated and, until this new University of Washington study, has never had a say in how the information is used. The study, published Aug. 8 in Nature, pieced together the complicated insertion of the human papillomavirus genome, which contains its own set of cancer genes, into Lacks' genome near an 'oncogene,' a naturally occurring gene that can cause cancer when altered. Scientists had never succeeded in reproducing cells in a culture until the HeLa cells, which reproduced an entire generation every 24 hours and never stopped. The cells allowed scientists to perform experiments without using a living human. The researchers discovered that the genome of the HeLa cell line, which has been replicated millions, if not billions of times, has remained relatively stable."
Wow (Score:5, Informative)
what a dupe, just 8 articles later...
Immortal Slashdot submissions? (Score:4, Informative)
The original is still on the front page. Good thing we have "editors".
Re:Stable except for the cancer??? (Score:5, Informative)
FTWA:
HeLa cells have a modal chromosome number of 82, with four copies of chromosome 12 and three copies of chromosomes 6, 8, and 17. As these are cancer cells, orderly cell division does not take place. Therefore the number of chromosomes they have can vary considerably, even within a single culture.