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Stem Cells Research

WHAT ARE STEM CELLS?

* Stem cells are biological cells found in all multicellular organisms, that can divide through mitosis and differentiate into diverse specialized cell types or can self renew to produce more stem cells. * In mammals, there are two broad types of stem cells: embryonic stem cells that are isolated from the inner cell mass of blastocysts, and adult stem cells that are found in various tissues. * In adult organisms, stem cells and progenitor cells act as a repair system for the body, replenished in adult tissues. In a developing embryo, stem cells can differentiate into all the specialized cells, but also maintain the normal turnover of regenerative organs, such as blood, skin, or intestinal tissues.

Properties

The classical definition of a stem cell requires the following properties: * Self-renewal - the ability to go through numerous cycles of cell division while maintaining the undifferentiated state. * Potency - the capacity to differentiate into specialized cell types. In the strictest sense, this requires stem cells to be either totipotent or pluripotent - to be able to give rise to any mature cell type, although multipotent or unipotent progenitor cells are sometimes referred to as stem cells.

In Self-Renewal..

Two mechanisms exist to ensure that the stem cell population is maintained: * Obligatory asymmetric replication - a stem cell divides into one father cell that is identical to the original stem cell, and another daughter cell that is differentiated * Stochastic differentiation - when one stem cell develops into two differentiated daughter cells, another stem cell undergoes mitosis and produces two stem cells identical to the original.

In Potency

* Potency specifies the differentiation potential (the potential to differentiate into different

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