Ruminations

Blog dedicated primarily to randomly selected news items; comments reflecting personal perceptions

Monday, October 13, 2008

Isn't That Typical?

Sometimes clarity of vision simply evades us as we pursue convoluted and difficult avenues to pursue a search for answers to vexing problems.

Medical researchers are working overtime in attempts to grow cells, the better to understand the complex process that nature has endowed them with. And with hoped-for results in edging science ever closer to understanding our evolution, making us better able to cope with break-downs in the wonderful mechanism involved in human bodies.

A medium whereby cells could be encouraged to grow, so they can be encouraged to mature and then be carefully examined by experts to determine their characteristics and how best they can be harnessed to repair broken body parts, the ravages of disease, an extension of human life-potential, is ongoing.

It was thought that in the weightlessness of space, experiments in growing human cells would result in far more immediate success, reflecting the process far more closely as it occurs in the human body.

We're informed that the International Space Station was built partially for the purpose of permitting scientists to grow cells in three dimensions; a process difficult to attain in a laboratory using conventional growth techniques.

Cells maturing on a slide don't come close to resembling those grown internally; gravity impairs their 'normal' maturation. Cells grown in a three-dimensional shape more closely mimic those grown naturally.

The cost for the ongoing development of the international space station has been thus far, $100-billion, and growing. And even though that much money has been dedicated to the design and completion of the station, no scientific experimentation of that nature has yet been undertaken, with scientists on board.

In cancer research, for example, tumours grown from those experimental cells bear little resemblance in shape to the real thing; they don't represent a reliable working model of human disease. There is currently available a gelatinous material processed from rodent cancer cells, but it's immensely expensive, taking it out of possibility for many research studies.

Suddenly, one day, a junior scientist gave some thought to the structure of an egg, and thought of using egg white with laboratory cells, to suspend them in that gooey, transparent liquid that so carefully nurtures the life-attaining yolk. And it worked, amazingly well, at an incredibly modest cost.

Revealing yet again that so many of the discoveries made by keen-minded scientists have come about by serendipity, not design.

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