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Asked by to Anna, Iain, Nick on 20 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
Question: How can stem cells develop in our human body?
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Anna Middleton answered on 20 Mar 2014:
Hi again
stem cells can develop from the embryo, the reason they are very important is becaues they have the ability to turn themselves into different types of cell. So they can be useful if you want to grow certain cells to provide replacements when the body is not working properly.As well as getting stem cells from a tiny embryo you can also get them from adults, e.g. from their bone marrow. However, these adult stem cells are not as good as the ones from embryos.
The reason getting stem cells from embryos is controversial is because the embryo is destroyed when you take the cells. That embryo ‘could’ have turned into a person if it had been left and implanted in a mother. However, the embryos that are chosen are those where the mother doesn’t want to implant them and so they never would have existed as a person. There is very tight regulation over stem cell research and use because of the ethical issues.
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Nick Goldman answered on 20 Mar 2014:
Different parts of the body are made of different types of cells, like skin cells, blood cells, liver cells or kidney cells… or whatever. Once one of these cells has formed, it doesn’t change type.
Stem cells are special types of cell. They can create more stem cells, or they can turn into other types of cell. This is going to be really important in future, when scientists learn how to control the production of stem cells and use them to create new cells to repair things that go wrong in our bodies.
How they develop is — just naturally! It’s a normal part of the process of the development of a baby, where stem cells start the process of creating all the different parts of your body, and they carry on throughout your life, generating new cells to maintain and repair your body.
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