Stem Cell Fraudster May Have Actually Made Breakthrough 206
Otter writes "Woo Suk Hwang's career swung from fame over his lab's claim of the first stem cells from a cloned human embryo to humiliation when the results were found to be fake. Research at Harvard on Hwang's cells has found that they are actually parthenogenic lines derived from eggs -- perhaps a more important and difficult achievement than what he had been claiming! 'Researchers said that the distinct "genetic fingerprint" of the stem cells means they may be the first in the world to be extracted from embryos produced by the so-called "virgin birth" method, or parthenogenesis. This happens when eggs are stimulated into becoming embryos without ever being fertilised by sperm, and has been achieved in animals. However, before Hwang, no one had managed to produce a human embryo using parthenogenesis which lived long enough to allow the extraction of viable stem cells.'"
Original paper (Score:5, Informative)
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Those darn feminists (Score:5, Funny)
Then all those parallel parking spaces across the world will fall into disuse....wasted real estate....
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"Soon they will not need men to reproduce, and will begin eliminating us."
You can be sure that someone will try to patent it ... now that they've managed to get the original researcher out of the picture ...
In a related story... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:In a related story... (Score:5, Funny)
Um, sorry to correct the writer but... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Um, sorry to correct the writer but... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Um, sorry to correct the writer but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now the probabilities are approaching miraculous.
Of course, that would mean that Jesus was genetically Mary's twin brother.
Re:Um, sorry to correct the writer but... (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry. You say Chimera and I think FMA.
But seriously, that's a very interesting question. Would that I still had mod points for the day.
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(so obligatory)
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So that's how Jesus' midi-chlorian level was so high!
Of course, that would mean that Jesus was genetically Mary's twin brother.
So hers were the same level? Now I'm confused.
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A much simpler explanation would be that Jesus was actually a woman. After all, doesn't the New Testament say:
Blessed be those who lower the seat after using the toilet, for they show thoughtfulness toward those who shall come after them. Yea verily men, thou art of whom I speak!
I think that's from the Sermon on the Mound :)
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Re:Um, sorry to correct the writer but... (Score:5, Insightful)
From the perspective of science, parthenogenesis has long been known to be a possible physical explanation for a real-life virgin birth. It's just that up until now, there has been no solid proof that it could happen in humans.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. You can find physical explanations for everything that happens in the universe. That's not the point. If you believe in God, then you must believe that it's his Universe that follows his Laws. Which means that everything that happens has an explanation inside the universe. The only question is, did it happen because an extra-universal God made it happen (some of these events have pretty freaky odds) or because it was simply a big coincidence? That's an answer that science can't provide (at least yet) and where theology comes into play.
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I'm afraid "half" is not well-defined at all in this context. Can you elaborate? Could you also define what you mean by "God" and how that relates to the concept of "half" that you have clarified for me above?
I've said it before and I'll say it again. You can find physical explanations for everything that happens in the universe. That's not the point. If you believe in God, then you must believe that it's his Uni
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The King James Version mistranslates the Hebrew word "almah", which means "young woman" as "virgin". (The Hebrew word, "bethulah", mean
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*cough*
"Behold, a virgin shall be with child and shall bring forth a Son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel" (which being interpreted is, "God with us"). --Matthew 1:23 of the New Testament
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The Jewish scholars who translated and compiled the Hebrew scriptures into a Greek version of the Old Testament, translated almah in Isaiah 7:14 as parthenos, which almost always means "virgin". Since these Jewish scholars were well acquainted with the meaning of the old Hebrew words as well as the Greek, their interpretation (developed hundreds of years before Jesus) should be given special weight.
You can
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----
You are sad,' the Knight said in an anxious tone: `let me sing you a song to comfort you.'
`Is it very long?' Alice asked, for she had heard a good deal of poetry that day.
`It's long,' said the Knight, `but very, VERY beautiful. Everybody that hears me sing it -- either it brings the TEARS into their eyes, or else -- '
`Or else what?' said Alice, for the Knight had made a sudden pause.
`Or else it doesn't, you know. The name of the song is called "HADDOCKS'
Re:Um, sorry to correct the writer but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Precisely. Which is why it makes *far* more sense to believe the obvious: Mary got pregnant out of wedlock, then came up with a clever little tale so she wouldn't be ostracized.
Honestly, why people turn to magic when simple human behaviour can explain such things, I'll never know.
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"Additionally, the Greek-English Lexicon edited by Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott lists other meanings for the word:
[parthenos], I. 1. maiden, girl; virgin, opp. [gyn], "woman". 2. of unmarried women who are not virgins, Iliad 2.514, etc. 3. , [parthenos, h], the Virgin Goddess, as a title of Athena at
Re:Um, sorry to correct the writer but... (Score:5, Interesting)
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I wouldn't be at all surprised. Either way, calling on parthogenesis as possible explanation, given the odds involved, is pretty ridiculous.
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What is he now? Is he still man or just God?
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I might have gotten that wrong though. Too much beer mixed in with my reading materials.
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Eh? When did Jesus sin? He was tempted by sin, but never gave into it. The Bible is very clear on the fact that he was "a man without blame".
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There's, it's a tie in the "unsupported claims" game.
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Having said that, it seems unlikely that the Church inserted JC into the writings of Josephus if no mention was made of him in the origin
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Of course, that's assuming that the concept of "free will" even makes any sense, much less "original sin."
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I read through a Roman Catholic catechism once. If I understood it right, the Roman Catholics believe Jesus was sinless at conception because (aside from necessity) his Father was God and his mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, was sinless at conception; and the Blessed Virgin Mary was made si
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Then I thought: "Wait, Christians thought a parthenogenic embryo WAS saving..."
A moment later: "Wait, Christians think a parthenogenic embryo can save mankind!"
I will stop thinking there
aut.bio. to include:virgin birth;star;prophecy;God (Score:2)
- virgin birth
- a star
- a prophecy
- relation to a god
Examples are:
-Rome's founder, Romulus, was the Son of the God Mars, and Rea Sivia, a mortal Vestal virgin
-Alexander the Great (conceived a thunderbolt from Zeus) (Today we just use electricity on the cell)
-emperor Augustus (son of God Apollo, conceived by a holy-snake)
-Minerva was the daughter of Jupiter not by sexual union
-daughter of the r
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That's properly spelled Kumbaya or Kum Ba Yah.
You're welcome.
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Say what? Arthur is the product of Uther Pendragon and the Lady Igraine, Uther having been magically disguised as her husband by Merlin.
According to Excaliber, Uther didn't even take his armor off to do the deed.
Not a waste of research (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not a waste of research (Score:5, Funny)
Then I should publish the 7376528 pickup lines that I know don't work....
Re:Not a waste of research (Score:5, Funny)
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basically (Score:5, Funny)
cl-0wned!
Woo Suk Hwang Haters... (Score:5, Funny)
have egg on their face now?
Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Cruelest...Parents...Evar
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Cruelest...Parents...Evar
A Better Link (Score:3, Informative)
He was not the first one. (Score:4, Funny)
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Quote from Woo Suk Hwang (Score:5, Funny)
Simple language version (Score:5, Informative)
I'm shooting for the non-geneticist version:
Basic Version:
a normal human cell has 2 copies of 22 non-sex chromosomes, and 2 sex chromosomes. The "copies" are almost certainly NOT identical to one another, but basically similar. These cells are "diploid" (having 2 of each chromosome) and are considered "somatic cells".
During normal reproduction, each person will contribute a "germline cell", an ova or a sperm, in which only 1 copy of each chromosome exists ("haploid"). These germline cells merge to create a "zygote" (which is diploid), which eventually becomes an embryo.
Parthenogenetic reproduction takes a germline cell, and duplicates the genetic material, making a diploid out of a haploid. Such replication happens with normal cells during the process of cell division ("mitosis"), so the real trick is (1) convincing the cell to do this duplication outside the cell division process and (2) convincing the cell that it is no longer a differentiated (specialized) cell, but instead a stem cell.
One interesting result here is that the parthenogenetic cell is NOT a clone of the parent cell - it will have two copies each of ONE of the copies of each chromosome from the parent, determined effectively at random. In some ways this means a parthenogenetic stem cell is less valuable than a cloned stem cell - it will not be a 100% match, though it will not contain any DNA foreign to the donor. In other ways it opens up all sorts of new areas of study.
One particular result is that it opens the opportunity for recessives to be studied. (Chromosomes have genes, each that code various proteins that run the bodies mechanics. Most people will therefore have two copies of every gene (having two copies of the chromosomes). Those genes may not be identical. Some genes only have their effects seen ("express") if there isn't another, different, copy of the gene present, and are called recessives. (blue eyes are a common example: A blue-eyed person has both genes as expressing "blue". Two blue eyed parents, having only the "blue" gene (hah!) to pass on to a child, will have a blue-eyed child (barring mutation). (Of course, the body is a big nasty mess of self-referencing code with lots of gotos, so examples tend to be oversimplified). Anyway, most recessives tend to be fairly rare in expressing, since any dominant gene will cover them up. Many recessives are bad. (Cystic Fibrosis is the most common example: 1 bad gene, okay. 2 bad genes: You die) A parthenogenetic process would allow for the study of recessives because you can take ova from a carrier (someone who has 1 copy of the bad gene), find one with the defective gene, put it through the parthenogenesis process, and bam, able to study the effects free of the presence of any other (different) copy of the gene.
Fun Fact: For 22 Chromosomes, people have two copies of most genes. Sex Chromosomes are not created equal. The X chromosome (every human has 1) has valuable and nifty genes. The Y chromosome (only in men) has very few genes (relatively). As a result, on Men X chromosomes express all recessives, and not on women. (The common example here is red-green colorblindness. Men with a defective gene are out of luck: Color-blind. Women with a defective gene get by if the other copy of the X chromosome has a functioning one. Result: Men are much more likely to be red-green color-blind.
Some papers a few months ago got some press for exploring the possible effects of this. (Men can serve as a "testing ground" for new mutations on the X chromosome, while women can serve as a judge of whether they are valuable without taking on the extra risk. Practiced through natural selection.)
Fun Fact #2: Women's cells don't just function with twice the number of X chromosomes though (We tend to react poorly to extra copies
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neat
Color-blindness (Score:2)
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Her daughters will only carry a defective gene, but unless the father is also color-blind, the daughters will not be color-blind.
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In each cell, one copy of the X will fold up and be largely non-functional. In each cell exactly WHICH copy folds up is essentially random, so women retain their diversity of X chromosome genes. Neat, huh?
Not quite randomly. Or rather it happens randomly in the embryo at a given point but every descendant of a cell has the same X-chromosome inactive. so you get patches of cells with the same chromosome inactive which leads to mosaicism such as that in calico cats. This also means that human females can have stripes in rare cases.
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You cant just trick the cell into doing cytokinesis
I can't just trick a cell into anything :) But Hwang's group apparently created a parthenogenetic line from a human female ova, so they came up with something that the cell doesn't normally do: a trick.
All genes on the Y chromosome are certainly not recessive
I oversimplified: Any gene on the Y chromosome that isn't on the X [I don't know if any duplicate, but most certainly don't] will have only one copy, and thus expresses even if "recessive" (assuming the gene is active at all). There is no other copy of the gene to interfere.
All cells has condensed chromatin, not just 'female' cells
True, but I'm unaware of any o
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I oversimplified: Any gene on the Y chromosome that isn't on the X [I don't know if any duplicate, but most certainly don't] will have only one copy, and thus expresses even if "recessive" (assuming the gene is active at all). There is no other copy of the gene to interfere.
Not always, sexual genetics can get really really weird as duplicate sex chromosomes (outside the normal XX,XY variants) are not universally fatal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XYY_syndrome [wikipedia.org]
Parthogenesis:reason #45 that ESCell guys are nuts (Score:2)
Remember guys: everytime you allow a fertile woman to go a month without being impregnated, you make God very very angry.
Re:ignorance in need of a cure (Score:5, Informative)
You mean parthenogenic. It means conception of an egg into an embryo without the male sperm (or any other male fertilization).
Yes, in some species, this occurs in nature.
(See? We men aren't useful for much except for fixing cars and hauling around heavy objects.
Because it wasn't previously thought possible.
Re:ignorance in need of a cure (Score:5, Funny)
(See? We men aren't useful for much except for fixing cars and hauling around heavy objects. ;)
It's a standing joke between my Beloved and I.... "If only cucumbers could mow the grass...."
I hope it's a joke, at least.
Re:ignorance in need of a cure (Score:5, Funny)
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Unfortunately, they dont even need us for cars [beyondhollywood.com] or lifting [canalblog.com] anymore.
And since us average slashdot readers [jeffpidgeon.com] weren't good for either anyway. what are we gonna do???
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
But seriously. Am I to understand that this guy did something thats amazingly hard to do, and fraudulently claimed he did something else that was easier than what he really did. And if that's so, what is wrong with this guy? Does
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More commonly reptiles and amphibians (Score:2)
Actually the wikipedia article is pretty interesting. I wonder if by discovering ways to do this in a test-tube environment, scientists could pave the way to enabling asexual rep
Re:ignorance in need of a cure (Score:5, Funny)
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> Is there a way to derive them other than using eggs?
As a Slashdot reader, I am sure that what you really want to ask is: "can we reproduce without women?". And Dr.Hwang's research has sadly failed to produce an answer to that question so far. Perhaps we should set up a donation site to prod him to research in that direction instead of trying to get women to conceive without men. I am sure that millions of Slashdot readers, and, of course, China, would be immensely gratef
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Of course, in most cases, homo sapien partho lines do NOT naturally develop normally: that's whats interesting about this research is that its been more normal in its development than most.
Re:Jesus? (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe, but only if Mary had a Y chromosome.
Re:Jesus? (Score:5, Funny)
"He" did have awfully long hair.
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Yes, now you too can have your own personal Jesus. Someone to hear your prayers, someone who cares, someone whos there...
(Strangely, I now feel like I have a Depeche Mode beating in my immediate future)
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I think that's the funniest use of that joke I've seen.
Re:Does this shed new light on his previous claims (Score:2)
He would've been in trouble anyway because of where he got the eggs from, but it's possible this was an almost-innocent mistake.
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>>Hwang achieves parthogenesis...
>>There's a joke in there, but I just can't put my finger on it...
I've got it! - Normally, you don't NEED a hwang to achieve parthenogenesis!
Re:Doom (Score:4, Insightful)
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