Oregon scientist reports first ES cells from cloned primate embryos

Monkey embryonic stem cells have, for the first time, been created through nuclear transfer. All attempts to make human embryonic stem cells through nuclear transfer so far have failed, but Jamie Thomson got the recipe for human embryonic stem cells by first doing so in monkeys, so researchers will likely be going to Shoukhrat Mitalipov of Oregon Health Sciences for advice. Mitalipov made his announcement Monday at the International Society for Stem Cell Research in Carins, Australia.

Hwang’s “clone” was really a parthenote, Daley reports

The human embryonic stem cells Hwang made came from a parthenote, or an activated, unfertilized egg. George Daley, a stem cell scientist from Children’s Hospital, Boston, announced this fact to an absolutely packed crowd in an exhibit hall at the International Society for Stem Cell Research in Cairns, Australia. That Hwang’s line came from a parthenote had been suspected, but this line of evidence hadn’t been presented before.

Insights to regeneration from the sea squirt– an interview

“Our study describes a remarkable regeneration phenomenon in a vertebrate ancestor, Botryllus schlosseri. In this animal, the entire body is regenerated from blood vessels. The novelty of our study is the finding that the regeneration occurs over multiple generations of individuals. The animals are initially abnormal, but gradually regain normal patterns, eventually converging (within several generations) into a completely normal animal. This is a novel regenerative/developmental pathway for a whole organism which to our knowledge has not been described before.”

How can journals improve peer review of cloning papers?

In the aftermath of the Hwang scandal in 2006, Nature editors thought long and hard about whether journals could employ editorial procedures that might prevent publication of such fraudulent data in the future, at least in the area of cloning and nuclear transfer research. Stay tuned to The Niche to see the views of top stem cell scientists on whether the Hwang scandal could have been prevented, and what journals should implement in the future to tighten up cloning papers.