Stem cells in Space

So about my Anatomy & Physiology professor? I don't mean to gush, but my gosh is she awesome. She has these fantastic stories related to whatever we're studying about. When we were talking about retraining cells to serve different functions, she told us about a NASA grant for stem cell research (yeah. NASA. And they were not using stem cells from unborn children.) she had worked on. Keep in mind as you read on that this is my layman's memory of a lot more complicated situation that she explained to us. A lot of it was over my head. So this is the gleanings.

As you know, stem cells are unspecialized cells that are able to renew themselves indefinitely and can also differentiate into specialized cell types with specific functions, such as a nerve cell or liver cell. Eventually, stem cells may be used to replace damaged or dysfunctional cells in the body with healthy new ones. But right, that's assuming we can figure out what determines or cues the cells to develop these specific functions and train them to do it ourselves.

For some reason that's over my level of comprehension at this point, their experiments were based on the hypothesis that they would be able to make more progress in this area and learn more about it if they were able to grow these cells without the impediment of gravity. And that's where NASA stepped in and allowed them to send their experiments up on their shuttles in this constantly rotating device on a regular basis. From what I understand, they're still conducting these experiments. From what she said it was really neat... but the resulting tissue was something they had never seen before and they had NO IDEA what the heck it was.

But right, the whole thing is pretty fascinating. Why did she trade that job for this one?! Apparently other jobs she's worked are as a scientist in a hospital setting-- she helped train back muscle so that it would contract with heart muscles every second of every day even though that's obviously not a normal function of back muscle. And right, they then wrap that muscle around the heart to strengthen it. Pretty freaking crazy.

I love being in class with this woman. Every little boring thing we learn becomes fascinating as she ties it in with clinical application and/or stories along those lines. She makes things you'd normally have to memorize make sense. I love listening to her... I wish I could be like her...