How long do you want to live?

[Minionman]

Stem cells = overhyped, overestimated and overrated.

And thats coming from someone who worked in mesenchymal stem cell isolation, adult stem cell culture and redifferentiation and applied stem cell science, namely tissue  engineering  :wacko:

If there was one lesson to be learned from the human genome project's major surprise then it's: many things are WAY more complicated than people think. So there's only 30.000 actual ORFs in the human genome? (One open reading frame very roughly translates to one gene) Not the previously estimated 100.000? What does it say about the 99% of our DNA that contain no ORFs? Really just evolutionary junk? Evolution does not work like that.

Mankind is *generations* away from understanding every detail of how those 30.000 genes are regulated by themselves and those other 99% of our genome. Knowing the genes is like having the part list for your new car. A list of the parts will not allow you to assemble it...  ;)
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Stem cells do make a nice way to argue against some more extreme religious-based laws, though. <_<

I did read about what some people think that "junk" DNA does though. Very cool stuff, cells and genetics in general.

Actually, I'd expect someone who does this kind of work to say it's overrated. It's a general pattern, it seems, that someone with experience in an area expects less of it than someone with less experience. I read once that there was actually a word in law called "CSI effect", where people would expect more from physical evidence than it could actually deliver.