Saturday, March 16, 2013

Most Popular Human Cell In Science Gets Sequenced

That's not Ms. Lack's genome anymore. The summary says it has more than the usual number of chromosomes. Cancer cells generally lose the ability to maintain their genomes, they become very unstable, allowing a bizzare, short-term form of evolution to occur. More mutations allow the cancer to get better at proliferating and invading, at least right up until the host dies. Usually, anyway, HeLa is or was unique in that it managed to escape it's own doom, much like we might need to do with Earth.

Sorry, got off topic there. Anyway, cloning HeLa cells, as in putting the genome into a fertilized egg like Dolly the sheep, that would probably not make a complete embryo. I'm not familiar with HeLa's genome, but I think it's likely they've lost the ability to control cell division, cell death, and/or cell differentiation. You need those processes to make anything that looks like an embryo. You'd likely end up with just another petrie dish of HeLa cells. It would be a neat if ethically questionable experiment.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/LtdUJq63CSg/story01.htm

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