What Is Stem Cell Research?

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Brian with ericksontutoring.blogspot.com. Today we're going to discuss stem cell research. So in order for us to discuss stem cell research we need to know what stem cells are. Stem cells are individual cells that are common and they have two distinguishing traits. First of all they can sort of maintain their cell line through mitotic division which means that they sort of have this really long or infinite lifetime and the second thing that makes them really important is they can divide, they're unspecialized but they can sort of at some point specialize into any number of different cells like the cells in your spinal chord or your heart or your lungs so they're extremely important for directing what cells become. So there is two types of stem cells. There is embryonic stem cells so those that comes from developing embryos and then there is also adult stem cells, stem cells that sort of help us rebuild, repair, recover from illness that sort of thing. Stem cell research is using stem cells to try to find new avenues. Some research is simply looking at what stem cells are so it is more basic research that is just asking the question and investigating stem cells. Others try to apply stem cells especially in the field of medicine so there is some ways that it is already being used for bone marrow transplants, for leukemia, that is a version of stem cell research and application, really stem cell research though holds huge potential for the future. We are hoping that we can understand them enough to utilize them enough that we'll be able to treat things like Parkinson's Disease, muscular sclerosis and other problems that perhaps putting in new cells that can specialize and help out might be able to solve some problems. So stem cell research is using stem cells and a lot of applications are in the medical field."