Human Embryos Cloned From Skin Cells

Eric wu submitted, created time 11 months 2 weeks (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)

A new breakthrough on stem-cell research!

A major breakthrough occurred last year when scientists figured out how to turn skin cells into ES-like cells. But they still want to be able to do cloning, otherwise known as somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), because embryonic cells are the "gold standard" for pluripotent cells--cells that can become any cell type in the body. In addition, scientists want to learn more about how an oocyte can reprogram a mature cell back into an ES cell.

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Human embryos cloned from adult cells

Charles submitted, created time 11 months 3 weeks (www.nature.com)

A California company has brought human cloning research to a new level with efficient production of cloned human blastocysts — an early stage of embryos.

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Next steps in human cloning: cloned blastocysts

Darkfrog submitted, created time 11 months 3 weeks (www.nature.com)

A team in California claims to have performed in truth what disgraced Seoul U. researcher Woo Suk Hwang had faked: Stegeman company of La Jolla CA claims the creation of a cloned blastocyst from which a tailored cell line can be made. They started with an adult patient's own cells, in this case, a man's fibroblasts.

The article doesn't explicitly say, but since this is a blastocyst, I am assuming that it went through a totipotent state. The pro-life crowd would consider this morally objectionable

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