UMUC Biology 103
Paper: Biology and Technology in the Real World
19 October 2014
I am so sorry to hear about your car accident. After doing a fair amount of research about spinal injury I started to grasp how complicated the area around the spinal cord is. It amazed me that the spinal cord has so many components to include neural cells and glia as well as nerve pathways in the cord alone, not to mention the complexity of the spinal column. I know it has been a while since you have study the human body but I overheard doctors offered some stem cell therapy to you so I wanted to enlighten you on the topic.
There are two major forms of stem cells: Embryonic stem cells and Somatic stem cells. Embryonic stem cells are cells that are derived from embryos and are formed from eggs that are fertilized in a laboratory.
Somatic, or adult stem cells are found in various parts of the body. These cells are also given variant names based on their origin of location. For example: Hematopoietic stem cells form all types of blood cells, bone marrow stromal stem cells form bones and cartilage components. Adult stem cells are less researched and normally regenerate when there is a need, injury or disease to replace existing cells in their surrounding tissue. These adult stem cells are differentiated and are able to form the type of cells surrounding it. Transdifferentiation is the ability of the stem cells to form different cell types. This is key to manipulating cells to change into what is needed to maintain a human fighting a disease, for example.
The key difference in embryonic stem cells from all other cells is their ability to change type when they are splitting.