The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2009: telomere/telomerase, Blackburn, Greider, Szostak

“for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase” press release The award goes to Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak. The problem of telomere/telomerases is highlighting the double but strictly related aging/cancer problem space: Blackburn Lab Greider Lab Szostak Lab

Thesis live 1.1 The stem cell niche

In the live thesis building blogxperiment I edit (digest, compile, write, rewrite, delete) my ongoing doctoral thesis in blog posts and put the parts together on thesis live. The title: The physiologic role of stem cells in tissues with different regenerative potential. 1.1 Stem cells and regenerative medicine The concept of the stem cell niche…

Thesis live: 1.1 Turnover or Every cell has a lifespan

In the live thesis building blogxperiment I edit (digest, compile, write, rewrite, delete) my ongoing doctoral thesis in blog posts and put the parts together on thesis live. The title: The physiologic role of stem cells in tissues with different regenerative potential. 1.1 Stem cells and regenerative medicine: basic concepts /turnover: cellular turnover/ The concept…

Oxygen control of stem cell niches and cell fates

Did you know that physiological normoxia generally falls in the 2-9% O2 (14.4-64.8 mm Hg) range for most adult cells in vivo? 3 remarkable exceptions are thymus, kidney medulla and most importantly bone marrow which can exist at 1% O2 (7.2 mm Hg). On the other hand, stem and progenitor cells are frequent residents of…

Friday Gumbo Journal Club: hESC line differences and a killer MSC review

It’s Friday, that is a lunch heaven for a Gumbo loving biogeek at Tulane: Stem Cell Express: Copy Number Variant Analysis of Human Embryonic Stem Cells from the Teitell Lab (It’s good to see that CIRM funded results and papers are coming out):

induced Pluripotent Stem cells from a 69 year old human: the hidden story?

The successful reprogramming (dedifferentiation) of differentiated human somatic cells into a pluripotent, embryonic stem cell-like state called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) using just 4 (and recently 3) introduced transcription factors is the biggest news of current stem cell biology. In the paper published in Cell by the Yamanaka group (Takahashi et al.) the iPS…

George Daley explains the source of Hwang’s “cloned” ES cells on Youtube

George Daley, the new president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research explains shortly the notorious case on a not embeddable (??????) YouTube video. If you are too busy to read the story, than watch it, it is 2 minutes and 13 seconds. Thanks for the video tip, Alexey Bersenev. If you have a…

Microvesicles in cell-to-cell communication

This slide is from my morning Journal Club presentation at our Tulane Lab. Here are 3 papers if you are interested in the “microvesicles” phenomenon. Membrane-derived microvesicles: important and underappreciated mediators of cell-to-cell communication.