Adventure Ausrama Blog

Scientists are creating tiny human organs from stem cells just for the sake of it. They hope that it will make for beneficial discoveries and applications in the future. Is it a waste of public and private money? It could be. There is an opportunity cost in using resources for wasteful projects. These tiny but useless mini-organs are called organoids. Indeed, Madeline Lancaster was messing-around" when she realized that she had grown a brain. Attempting to form embryonic stem cells from neural rosettes she accidentally succeeded. The floating milky substance floating in the culture was an embryonic brain - retina cells. A mass of different cells were found when the contents of the culture dish were closely analysed. Organoids seem to mimic the operation of full-sized natural organs. Eye, stomach, gut, kidney, liver, pancreas, lung, prostate and breast mini-organs have been made. They do mimic some of the functions of the real thing. Unfortunately, they remain e...

Scientists have made mice transparent - let us hope they were dead first! Studying the human body and test animals in general is difficult because usually one has to carry out dissections to see inside.  The new process will change medicine. Lipids block sunlight in bodies, so it has to be replaced with acrylamide which is just transparent hydrogel. After the acrylamide is absorbed, the bodies are placed into detergent which absorbs the lipids. Electricity is also applied to reduce the time taken to "clean" tissue. The treated mice do not keep their original shape. They end up like gel in a plastic bag. Internal organs can be clearly seen, however. After staining, the structure of organs can be seen as shown in the picture above. Micro-slicing has been used to date. A computer assembles a 3D structure for study. Both systems will probably be used in future as each as its benefits. There are plans to adapt the transparency technique to evaluate tissue in c...