What Is It Called When A Cell Has The Ability To Change Into Another Type Of Cell?

A stem jail cell is a cell with the unique power to develop into specialised cell types in the body. In the futurity they may be used to replace cells and tissues that have been damaged or lost due to affliction.

What is a stem prison cell?

• Our trunk is made up of many dissimilar types of cell.
• Most cells are specialised to perform particular functions, such as red claret cells that conduct oxygen around our bodies in the blood, but they are unable to separate.
• Stem cells provide new cells for the body as it grows, and supplant specialised cells that are damaged or lost. They have two unique properties that enable them to do this:
  • They can divide over and over again to produce new cells.
  • As they divide, they tin can change into the other types of jail cell that make upwards the trunk.

An analogy showing a stalk prison cell giving ascension to more stem cells or specialised cells.
Paradigm credit: Genome Enquiry Limited

Different types of stem jail cell

• At that place are three chief types of stalk cell:
  • embryonic stem cells
  • adult stalk cells
  • induced pluripotent stem cells

Embryonic stem cells

• Embryonic stem cells supply new cells for an embryo as it grows and develops into a babe.
• These stem cells are said to be pluripotent, which means they tin can change into any jail cell in the body.

Adult stem cells

• Adult stem cells supply new cells equally an organism grows and to supersede cells that become damaged.
• Adult stalk cells are said to be multipotent, which ways they can only change into some cells in the trunk, not whatsoever cell, for example:
  • Blood (or 'haematopoietic') stalk cells can only replace the various types of cells in the blood.
  • Skin (or 'epithelial') stalk cells provide the different types of cells that make upward our skin and pilus.

An illustration showing unlike types of stem cell in the body.
Image credit: Genome Inquiry Limited

Induced pluripotent stem cells

• Induced pluripotent stem cells, or 'iPS cells', are stalk cells that scientists make in the laboratory.
• 'Induced' ways that they are made in the lab by taking normal adult cells, like pare or claret cells, and reprogramming them to become stem cells.
• Just like embryonic stem cells, they are pluripotent so they can develop into any jail cell type.

A scientist here at the Wellcome Genome Campus working on induced pluripotant stem cells.
Paradigm credit: Genome Research Limited

Why are stem cells useful?

• Stem cells have several uses including:
  • research – to help us sympathise the basic biological science of howliving things work and what happens in dissimilar types of prison cell during disease.
  • therapy – to supervene upon lost or damaged cells that our bodies can't replace naturally.

Stem cell inquiry

• Enquiry is looking to better understand the properties of stem cells so that we can:
  • sympathise how our bodies grow and develop
  • find ways of using stalk cells to replace cells or tissues that have been damaged or lost.
• We can utilize stem cells to study how cells become specialised for specific functions in the body, and what happens when this process goes incorrect in disease.
• If we understand stem cell evolution, nosotros may be able to replicate this process to create new cells, tissues and organs.
• Nosotros tin can grow tissue and organ structures from stem cells, which can and so be studied to find out how they function and how they are affected by different drugs.

These center cells were grown from stem cells in a petri dish and can be used to report the chirapsia rhythm of the heart.
Image credit: The McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine, University Health Network

Stem jail cell therapy

• Cells, tissues and organs can sometimes be permanently damaged or lost by illness, injury and genetic conditions.
• Stem cells may be one way of generating new cells that can and so be transplanted into the torso to replace those that are damaged or lost.
• Adult stem cells are currently used to treat some conditions, for instance:
  • Blood stem cells are used to provide a source of good for you blood cells for people with some blood weather, such as thalassaemia, and cancer patients who take lost their own blood stem cells during treatment.
  • Skin stalk cells tin can be used to generate new skin for people with astringent burns.
• Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is an example of a illness where stem cells could be used as a new form of treatment in the future:
  • Some people with historic period-related macular degeneration lose their sight because cells in the retina of the center called retinal paint epithelium (RPE) cells stop working.
  • Scientists are using induced pluripotent stalk cells to produce new RPE cells in the lab that can so be put into a patient's eye to replace the damaged cells.

An illustration showing how stem cells can be used to produce retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells that can be used to treat patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Image credit: Genome Inquiry Limited

• Stem cells could exist used to generate new organs for utilise in transplants:
  • Currently, damaged organs tin be replaced by obtaining salubrious organs from a donor, still donated organs may be 'rejected' past the trunk as the immune system sees it equally something that is foreign.
  • Induced pluripotent stalk cells generated from the patient themselves could be used to grow new organs that would have a lower take chances of being rejected.

How practise you lot generate induced pluripotent stem cells?

• Signals in the body tell a prison cell what type of specialised cell it should exist past switching some genes on and some genes off.
• To generate induced pluripotent stem cells, scientists re-innovate the signals that normally tell stem cells to stay as stem cells in the early embryo. These switch off any genes that tell the prison cell to be specialised, and switch on genes that tell the cell to be a stalk jail cell.

This page was last updated on 2021-07-21

Source: https://www.yourgenome.org/facts/what-is-a-stem-cell

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