Guest:

Stem cell researcher Dr. Kristin Hope discusses her work and latest paper in Nature. Her team examined umbilical cord blood-derived hematopoietic stem cells and the RNA-binding protein musashi-2.

Resources and Links

Doctors Say Olympics Should Be Postponed or Moved – Doctors and professors are urging the World Health Organization to move or postpone the summer Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro due to the widening Zika outbreak in Brazil.

Bacteria Resistant to Last-Resort Antibiotic Appears in U.S. – This article reports that a 49-year-old woman in United States has tested positive for a strain of Escherichia coli, known as mrc-1, which is resistant to the antibiotic colistin and that the bacteria’s gene rides on a transferable loop of DNA called a a plasmid.

Fruit Fly’s Giant Sperm Is Quite an Exaggeration – This article reveals that certain fruit fly species, such as Drosophila bifurca, males measuring just a few millimeters produce sperm with a tail as long as 5.8-centimeters.

FDA Approves Device to Wean Addicts off Heroin – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a drug-emitting implant to combat addiction to heroin and other opioids killing thousands of people annually.

Stem Cell Industry Blowing Up... The Global Market for Stem Cells – This article reports that the global stem cell market reached over $5.9 billion in 2015 and will grow from about $6.7 billion in 2016 to nearly $12.3 billion in 2021, registering a compound annual growth rate of 13.1% from 2016 through 2021.

Israeli Firms Develop High-Speed 3D Printer for Stem Cells – Israeli 3D printer firm Nano Dimension has successfully lab-tested a 3D bioprinter for stem cells, paving the way for the potential printing of large tissues and organs.

Biologists Find How Plants Reconstitute Stem Cells – A team of biologists at New York University showed that regenerating plants can naturally reconstitute their stem cells from more mature cells by replaying embryogenesis.

Genetic Drift Can Compromise Mitochondrial Replacement by Nuclear Transfer in Human Oocytes – Researchers show that using human mitochondrial replacement stem cell lines, even though the low levels of heteroplasmy introduced into human oocytes by mitochondrial carryover during nuclear transfer often vanish, they can sometimes instead result in mtDNA genotypic drift and reversion to the original genotype.

Photo Reference: Courtesy of Dr. Kristin Hope

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