The private cord blood bank industry has promised families all kinds of great things over the years. A typical ad for such cord blood banks might say, “Your child may need cord blood in the future for a cure.” The industry also often uses the analogy of frozen cord blood as an insurance policy for […]
Anti-aging might already be the big regenerative medicine story of 2024 and it’s only early March. Anti-aging hype going to the dogs? One of my 20 stem cell and regenerative medicine predictions for 2024 was that longevity would continue to make big news including in some not-so-great ways. In just over two months there has
What is a woolly dog? Is it somehow related to the Woolly Mammoth? Before we get into that and the rest of my recommended reads, note that I’m finalizing my list of contenders for this year’s The Screamers Science Hype Awards. Last year The BBC won The Screamers for an article “Baby’s life ‘probably saved’
Holiday reads: woolly dog vs. mammoth, man eggs, designer B-cells, bluebird bio blues Read More »
What’s more important than Woolly Mammoth de-extinction research in the stem cell arena? Only maybe a 10,000 other things. Still, the mammoth de-extinction efforts capture people’s attention much more than the average research story. Mammoth De-extinction update Is de-extinction only a pipette dream? This startup has a big, expensive plan to find out, Popular Science.
Remember Paolo Macchiarini, the famous-turned-infamous so-called “stem cell surgeon” who ended up in legal trouble and with trial participants who died? Before we get into this we have a new feature for our weekly reads, which is the stem cell and regenerative medicine tweet of the week. See that at the bottom of the post.
Weekly reads: Macchiarini pub, cloned journal, Mammoth genome, tweet of the week Read More »
The push for de-extinction of woolly mammoths is a perfect example of when one notion can be both fun and a rotten idea. You can’t let the coolness push you down a bad path. You can see my new YouTube video covering the main points of this post from our YouTube channel further down. Please
Why De-extinction of Woolly Mammoths is Still a Bad Idea Read More »
De-extinction is big right now and some of the extinct target creatures are big too like the woolly mammoth. “Let’s bring back these extinct creatures”, say proponents. Wouldn’t it be cool? I have to admit seeing a woolly mammoth, mastodon, or saber tooth tiger would be cool, but such efforts would not be without consequences
Why I oppose de-extinction of woolly mammoths Read More »
Is trying to clone a woolly mammoth all just science hype? Hype is a bad thing and it hurts science in major ways. Hype channels resources away from valuable scientific pursuits and flushes them down the toilet. Hype makes people have unrealistic expectations so they end up disappointed by even very important science if it
Cloning the mammoth: more than science hype? Read More »
Gene editing continues to advance both in the clinic trial arena and at more basic science levels including a report on a new approach called click editing. The two gene editing papers below highlight the variety of tools now available. Gene Editing papers including click editing Click editing enables programmable genome writing using DNA polymerases
Recommended reads: click editing, CRISPR v. progeria, diapause transcriptional program Read More »
Last week one of the most popular stories was about a preprint from a mammoth de-extinction research group led by George Church having made elephant stem cells. I finally got a chance to look carefully at their preprint. Elephant stem cells preprint and mammoth de-extinction The elephant stem cells preprint has solid data. It looks like
Weekly reads: elephant stem cells, RIP Connie Eaves, AI cell biology Read More »