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AnastomosisJihad
Hominid



Registered: 01/01/08
Posts: 700
Loc: Ohio
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HeLa cells
#7874520 - 01/13/08 05:37 PM (16 years, 19 days ago) |
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I'm in the process of writing a paper on evolution. I'm thinking about using this for the first page.
In 1951 Henrietta Lacks died of cancer. She left a grieving husband and five children, but Henrietta’s biological legacy extends beyond her human progeny. Cells collected from the tumor on Henrietta's cervix are still alive today and have spread from the laboratory in Maryland where they were first cultivated to every continent on Earth. Dubbed "HeLa" by George Grey, then head of tissue culture research at Johns Hopkins, these tumor cells reproduced more vigorously and colonized media faster than anything seen before. Normal human cells can only divide about fifty times before dying out due to depletion of telomeres, small sequences of repetitive DNA that get snipped off the ends of chromosomes during cell replication. Once all the telomeres are used up, the chromosome can no longer replicate itself and the cells die. This is one of the reasons why all men are mortal. Unlike a human cell, however, HeLa can divide repeatedly without depleting telomeres, because it produces an enzyme called telomerase during cell division. This adaptation enabled the HeLa cell chromosomes to replicate completely without depleting telomeres. HeLa was immortal.
This cell line's ability to replicate indefinitely was not produced by a random mutation. Helacyton gartleri (Van Valen 1991), formed by a combination of human genes with those of a virus (Human papillomavirus 18) associated with the form of cancer that killed Henrietta Lacks. It is a new species of life that differs so radically from both human and virus that it is difficult to find a place for it in current taxonomical systems. Clearly, Hela is a eukaryote descendant from Homo sapiens, but with a body plan and life style resembling that of an ameba, it makes little sense to classify Helacyton gartleri as a chordate. Many respected biologists deny that HeLa cells are even a species that should be named, arguing they are merely human cancer cells, but these arguments are more about the definition of “species” than they are about morphological, physiological, and phylogenetic fact. Hela cells have almost twice as many chromosomes as human cells, contain non-human genes, exploit a different ecological niche than humans, and have escaped cultivation to become “weeds” in petri dishes around the world. Regardless of whether or not one chooses to call them a species, Hela cells are without a doubt a new ‘kind’ of life, one that resulted from the anastomosis of two widely separated genetic lineages.
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What's up with HeLa?
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OrgoneConclusion
Blue Fish Group



Registered: 04/01/07
Posts: 45,414
Loc: Under the C
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I can't wait for the movie wherein HeLa cells escape the lab and start taking over the world.

Too bad the cancer victim wasn't named Tracy Laura Lacks and thus: TraLaLa cells...
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Edited by OrgoneConclusion (01/13/08 06:24 PM)
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AnastomosisJihad
Hominid



Registered: 01/01/08
Posts: 700
Loc: Ohio
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Scary aren't they?
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krin
Stranger


Registered: 11/20/04
Posts: 370
Last seen: 11 years, 7 months
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Then telamerase is the key to immortality
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eve69
--=..Did Adam and ...?=--



Registered: 04/30/03
Posts: 3,910
Loc: isle de la muerte
Last seen: 24 days, 8 hours
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Re: HeLa cells [Re: krin]
#7877172 - 01/14/08 06:33 AM (16 years, 18 days ago) |
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Good subject. I always wondered what happened to that research, so personally I think you've chosen an important and interesting topic. You raise alot of questions from the outset, thus creating a plot.
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