Human heart mitochondria and nitric oxide production: hard work

I’ve almost missed the publication of an article by our group back home, in Budapest which is my first real first author peer-review article published in Life Sciences, impact factor, 2.512 as of 2005. The peer-review process was hard (illustration: me under the hood) and bloody, because it is a negative result, so you have to be more careful and logically step-by-step. We’ve eventually showed that Human heart mitochondria do not produce physiologically relevant quantities of nitric oxide. Take care, it is hardcore science without any popular tone. Abstract here:

hESCs derived from single blastomere by Lanza et al.: second trial in Nature with success

In science you can always correct yourself. In stem cell research it is of utmost importance to correct what you’re claiming, if you’ve claimed it not accurately enough before. Now in November 23 Nature magazine the Lanza group has a corrected manuscript on Human embryonic stem cell lines derived from single blastomeres on the possibility to generate human embryonic stem cells from a single cell that is isolated from an in vitro eight-celled embryo during routine preimplantatation genetic diagnosis (PGD). So it is an ethically non-controversial way to collect human embryonic stem cells, although it is working only in the case of in vitro fertilized embryos. Safety concerns of the protocol are perturbations of genomic imprinting due to the longer time the embryo remains in vitro during the process. As Joe Leigh Simpson says in the News and Views commentary: “This work with human blastomeres follows a demonstration by the same group that ES cells can be derived from single mouse blastomere. In these earlier mouse experiments, an intact viable embryo developed that consisted of the seven remaining blastomeres; by contrast, in the work with human cells, multiple blastomeres were taken from the 8-cell stage and no embryos were allowed to remain in culture. This was a source of confusion in the earlier online publication.”

See also: Editor’s Summary, Bodyhack, New York Times