[extropy-chat] wretched journalists strike again

Brett Paatsch bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au
Wed Dec 14 04:33:00 UTC 2005


Robert wrote:
  Ah, would that we had more "real" scientists on the list and fewer philosophers and people who have read entire libraries of SciFi... (semi- :-;).


    The process works by taking stem cells from a biopsy of a live animal (or a
    piece of flesh from a slaughtered animal) and putting them in a 
    three-dimensional growth medium

  Note that they do not say "satellite cells", "myoblasts" or "muscle stem cells" which would be more appropriate if what one wants to do is produce muscle tissue for consumption.  So there is some lack of accuracy but perhaps not completely out of line since the general reading public knows what "stem cells" are but probably don't know what "satellite cells" or "myoblasts" are.  (This problem will not be solved until everyone has a hardwired (implanted) brain-to-web link with the first two options on the "lookup menu" for unfamiliar words being Wikipedia and Google.  I'd have PubMed probably as #3 but your choices may vary.)



    - a sort of scaffolding made of proteins.

  And exactly *what* is this "scaffolding" produced from? (One doesn't exactly have "tons" of collagen and elastin (which are themselves proteins) sitting around in bottles (at least in outer space)).  [See [1] for a discussion of the extracellular matrix.]

   
The OCR text in your link is scrambled. It has, for instance, as units of length ( "run", and ~Lm) . "al"  I suspect, probably means the first amino acid. I gave up reading 
because it wasn't clear that it was from a reliable source i.e. I didn't recognize the author and because some of the strambled OCR was making it difficult to read. 

The original article Damien posted said, above the bit that you excerpted, that they were doing it with a view to mass production/consumption, the NASA space stuff came in later. 

    Bathed in a nutritional mix of glucose, amino acids and minerals, the stem
    cells multiply and differentiate into muscle cells, which eventually form 
    muscle fibers. Those fibers are then harvested for a minced-meat product.

   And precisely *where* do the glucose and amino acids come from?

  Why don't the people consume a "nutrition shake" made from the glucose and amino acids mix in the first place? 

Good question.


Brett Paatsch
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