Reticulocytes are terminally differentiating red blood cells that do not contain lysosome. Therefore, it was postulated that the degradation of hemoglobin in these cells is mediated by a non-lysosomal machinery.
So someday in the near future hopefully rather than having a foot or a leg amputated we'll just give you an injection of the cells and restore the blood flow. We've also created entire tubes of red blood cells from scratch in the laboratory. So there are a lot of exciting things in the pipeline.
When we talk about stem cells, we are actually talking about a complicated series of things, including adult stem cells which are largely cells devoted to replacing individual tissues like blood elements or liver or even the brain.
Conversational intelligence is hard-wired into every single human-being's cells. It's the way the cells engage with each other. Believe it or not, cells talk to each other. The immune system talks to the cells.
Most of our brain cells are glial cells, once thought to be mere support cells, but now understood as having a critical role in brain function. Glial cells in the human brain are markedly different from glial cells in other brains, suggesting that they may be important in the evolution of brain function.
One of the first papers I wrote at the University of Wisconsin, in 1977, was on stem cells. I realized that if I changed the environment that these cells were in, I could turn the cells into bone, and if I changed the environment a bit more, they would form fat cells.
One can envisage taking cells from a patient with sickle-cell anaemia or an inherited blood disorder and using the Cas9 system to fix the underlying genetic cause of the disease by putting those cells back into the patient and allowing them to make copies of themselves to support the patient's blood.
Both in Britain and America, huge publicity has been given to stem cells, particularly embryonic stem cells, and the potential they offer. Of course, the study of stem cells is one of the most exciting areas in biology, but I think it is unlikely that embryonic stem cells are likely to be useful in healthcare for a long time.
Adult stem cells have shown great potential and have effectively helped patients. Another alternative is cord-blood stem cells. These are a neglected resource that could be used to treat a diverse body of people.
One of my motivations to become a blood specialist was to study malaria in red blood cells. But in science, you discover something and you want to go this way, but your work goes that way.
People lose fifty million skin cells every day. The cells get scraped off and turn into invisible dust, and disappear into the air. Maybe we are nothing but skin cells as far as the world is concerned.
Whatever the occasion, do not neglect alcohol. No other refreshment will do. Yes, alcohol kills brain cells, but it's very selective. It only kills the brain cells that contain good sense, shame, embarrassment, and restraint.
Using adult stem cells drawn from bone marrow and umbilical cord blood system cells, scientists have discovered new treatments for scores of diseases and conditions such as Parkinson's disease, juvenile diabetes, and spinal cord injuries.
What do cells do when they see a broken piece of DNA? Cells don't like such breaks. They'll do pretty much anything they can to fix things up. If a chromosome is broken, the cells will repair the break using an intact chromosome.
Well, there are two kinds of stem cells: adult stem cells, which you can get from any part of a grown body, and embryonic stem cells. These are the inner- core of days-old embryos that can develop into any kind of cell.
Odd to think that the piece of you I know best is already dead. The cells on the surface of your skin are thin and flat without the blood vessels or nerve endings. Dead cells, thickest on the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet.
The problem of different sensitivities of distinct protein groups to lysosomal inhibitors has remained unsolved and may have served as an important trigger in the future quest for a non-lysosomal proteolytic system that may be involved in at least certain aspects of intracellular protein degradation.