what is the role of stem cells in cloning?

Question

clonning is the process of producing copies of itself.

Answer 1

Stem Cell Sciences looking overseas
HAMISH RUTHERFORD

STEM Cell Sciences (SCS) has revealed it is to search outside the UK for new investors due to frustration at the lack of interest in this country.

Edinburgh-based SCS, which floated on AIM last July, has seen its share price fall by around half since, valuing the company at around £11 million.

Australian chief executive Peter Mountford said he believed the company was significantly undervalued and additional investment would be sought.

"We're a little disappointed in our current position and interest in the UK market. We've essentially delivered all of our milestones since the IPO and yet we've seen a halving in our share price almost.

"When we look at our US competitors, I'm confident in saying we're significantly undervalued, and even compared to our Australian competitors."

Mountford said in the coming months the company will seek to increase its profile outside the UK, seeking new international investors. UK investors were more risk averse than those in the US.

However, Mountford, who ran the Edinburgh University spin-out from Melbourne for a period until 2003, said there was absolutely no chance the headquarters would be moved, with Scotland a good operating location and the UK regulatory environment "ideal".

"We have freedom to operate across the board of our activities, some of which we would be blocked from doing in the UK," he said.

Yesterday the company reported an interim loss of £1.12m for the six months to 30 June, a 4 per cent increase on the year.

Mountford said the company was growing in line with expectations.

"SCS's technologies continue to be widely used and trialled by leading academic researchers. Recent publications in the UK and USA confirm SCS's proprietary neural stem cells as the most efficient tissue-derived cell for therapeutic cloning."

Besides its base in Edinburgh, SCS has operations and joint ventures in Japan, the USA and Australia.

The company also announced delays to its Cambridge facility, which will allow ramped up production of stem cells for sale.

The facility will now be opened towards the end of the year, with revenue scheduled for the second half of the year now pushed back to early 2007.

House brokers Collins Stewart retain a buy rating on the stock, with a fair value of £74m for the company, almost seven times its current value. The firm is forecasting full-year revenue of £1.7m.

Shares in SCS dropped another 0.5p to 50.5p yesterday, compared with 96.5p a year ago.

Answer 2

Somatic cell nuclear transfer can create clones for both reproductive and therapeutic purposes. Cloning a cell means to derive a (clonal) population of cells from a single cell. This is an important in vitro procedure when the expansion of a single cell with certain characteristics is desired, for example in the production of gene-targeted ES cells. Most individuals began as a single cell and are therefore the result of clonal expansion in vivo.

Cloning means to create a new organism with the same genetic information as a cell from an existing one(identical). It is an asexual method of reproduction, where fertilization or inter-gamete contact does not take place. In a modern context, this can involve somatic cell nuclear transfer in which a cell of the organism to be cloned, with its nucleus containing the DNA, is transferred into an egg cell which has had its nucleus removed. As the nucleus contains almost all of the genetic information of a lifeform, the "host" egg cell will develop into an organism with genetically identical nuclear DNA to the nucleus "donor". However, this process does not conserve the mitochondrial genome (of the nucleus donor) unless the nucleus and egg cell donor were from the same maternal lineage. Also mutations occur with every cell division so no two cells in an individual are identical, nor are clones. Thus, nuclear transfer clones from different maternal lineages are not clones in the strictest sense because the mitochondrial genome is not the same as that of the nucleus donor cell from which it was produced. This may have important implications for cross-species nuclear transfer in which nuclear-mitochondrial incompatibilities may lead to inviability.

You could get more information from the link below...

Answer 3

Human embryonic stem (ES) cells are derived from human embryos that are 5 to 6 days old. At this stage of development the embryo is a hollow ball of about 200 to 250 cells, no bigger than a pinhead, and is called a blastocyst. Within the blastocyst is a small group of 30 to 34 cells, called the inner cell mass. These inner mass cells are able to develop into any type of cell (pluripotent) and are the source of all the highly specialised cells found in an adult organism. The remaining cells generate all other tissues such as the foetal membranes and placenta.


Australian Stem Cell Centre
Once the inner mass cells are obtained, they may be used to create pluripotent stem cell ‘lines’ – cell cultures that can be grown indefinitely in the laboratory. These lines are important tools for scientists, as they are all the same and it means new cells do not need to be isolated every time they want to do an experiment.


ES cells can become any cell type of the body because they are pluripotent, making them attractive for developing different tissues for cell-based therapies.

Large numbers of embryonic stem cells can be grown in the laboratory relatively easily. ES cell lines are sometimes referred to as immortal, due to their ability to keep dividing (self-renew) over many generations. Therefore established cell lines can be maintained in laboratories for further research and generation of cells for cell-based therapies for many years.

Human embryonic stem cells could be used to seek out and destroy a fatal form of brain cancer. Experiments in mice with brain tumours show that the cells will migrate across the brain and deliver an anti-cancer payload.

ES cells may have great potential in forming the basis of long-term therapies, but issues regarding their safety must be overcome first. It is not yet known how transplanted ES cells would behave inside the body, but scientists are particularly worried that the transferred ES cells might not stop dividing. This uncontrolled growth may generate tumours, and this has already been shown to occur in laboratory cultures. While the cells in these tumours are benign, scientists do not know how they might behave in the body. However, cells differentiated from ES cells have been used in a number of studies, and have developed normally. This issue must be fully explored before clinical trials can proceed in people.

Another issue with the use of ES cells in regenerative medicine is that they may trigger immune rejection by the patient’s immune system. A number of alternatives are being investigated to overcome this, including combining stem cell technology with cloning methods in a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer. This is discussed in the section on stem cells in cloning.

There are a range of opinions about ES cell research in the community. The overwhelming issue for most people opposed to ES cell research is that taking inner mass cells inevitably leads to the destruction of the embryo. For those that view a fertilised egg as a human life this is most distressing. Others consider the blastocyst to be nothing more than a ball of cells with the potential to become a human. Debate on this issue remains considerable and controversial.

Answer 4

Well stem cells are unique cells which can mutate to anycell(liver,heart,blood whatever) .These are very useful in generating cloned organs of the anima and hence are useful

Answer 5

go to answers.com type this question as it is you get some interesting links go through them it might throw some light.