Article on the reflection of media on new scientific research - Essay Example

Rossi brings about an understanding that previously used techniques firstly are extremely inefficient and do not always produce a true IPS. Secondly, due to the use of a retroviral vectors the cells tend to reject the attempt of incorporating the modified RNA and view the viruses as infectious threat leading them to undergo apoptosis and activation of interferon pathways. Furthermore, due to the nature of retroviral integration the cells become prone to mutagenesis leading to cancer due to activation of Onco-genes.

Thirdly, once an IPS cell is produced by the old method there is a question of how closely these cells are able to act as the Gold Standard ES Embryonic Stem cells, and if they are prone to reversing back to their pre- induced state. Lastly, the future of IPS is to have them generated specifically for each patient and the old ways of Pluripotency Induction are very limited and only a small amount of Pluripotent cells are able to be derived (Johnson, 2010). New IPS cell derivation technique is quite impressive in a number of ways; primarily in the derivation simplicity and then in the technique itself.

Above all Rossi states there is no need for a specialized lab, as any scientist with basic RNA modifying equipment is able to create the IPS cells, the media realizes this opens up enumerate possibilities for not only future research but also gene therapy(Warren et al., 2010). These therapies will be able tobe carried out all over the world as regular scientist will be able to modify cells in not only high tech labs such as Harvard Univerity but also in remote places as hospitals across Africa.

The IPS generation technique described in the Rossi article entitled “Highly Efficient Reprogramming to Pluripotency and Directed Differentiation of Human Cells with Synthetic Modified mRNA” discusses that the induction discovered by Yamanaka requires the manipulation of only four Genes; KLF4, c-MYC, OCT4, and SOX2 (KMOS) are the four strips of RNA that are required as transcription factors to re-set a skin cell in to an IPS cell. As it turns out the new induction procedure is also faster at producing IPS cells; Lowry and Takahashi found that the new technique produces IPS cells with efficiency thirty six times the previously used method, this indicates an enumerate improvement on IPS cell production efficiency, and opens opportunities for larger scale treatments in the future.

As the comparative research carried out by Chan and Lowry indicates the new technique produces IPS colonies within seventeen days, which is roughly twice as fast then the four week minimum it would take using the out dated technique. Over all, the media reporters seem to be moving in the direction of how this research will effect the general population, clinical stem cell application and future research. Their curiosity is in the right place as this research will revolutionize the way stem cells are perceived by the general public, since we probably will no longer require cells from aborted fetuses.

Moreover, due to the quantity and speed of production of IPS cells researchers may conduct mass scale clinical