Friday 13 January 2012

September: Harvesting Stem Cells and Hydrogen Cars

I've been writing a lot about the new and exciting capabilities of stem cells, but without a big enough supply of them, there is no hope that any of the treatments will ever be applied. When left to their own devices on a plastic culture dish, they do reproduce, but rather than into the useful pluripotent stem cells, they create other body cells, which cannot be used in therapies. So when, in September, a new type of plastic was devised that allowed stem cells to grow and still keep their characteristics, it got us one step closer to the clinical use of these new treatments.

Following on from August's discovery of an enzyme that produces hydrogen from water, the start of the new school year also was the start of MEC technology, or Microbial Electrolysis Cells. Osmotic power stations already capitalise on the potential difference between salt- and freshwater, but these new cells also add a bacteria that produces hydrogen gas to create a self sustaining, relatively cheap method of producing hydrogen for use in cars and other technologies.

In other science: a detector is released that can tell when we're lying, blood vessels are printed on a 3D printer, and a single molecule motor is engineered.

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