#somatic cells

Fertility Forever

In most animals, including human beings, the production and segregation of germ cells – the cells that will give rise to sperm or eggs – occurs in early embryonic development and never again. By contrast, jellyfish, such as the North Atlantic Hydractinia pictured, make germ cells (red) throughout their entire lives, and thus can develop sperm or, in this female’s case, eggs (green) forever. It turns out that jellyfish maintain a population of stem cells with the capacity to become either somatic (body) cells or germ cells as required. Despite this stark difference in reproductive biology between humans and Hydractinia, both require essentially the same gene for germ cell production, which gets switched off in humans and remains active in jellyfish. This common genetic mechanism and the endless ability of jellyfish to regenerate their reproductive systems could have implications for the study of certain infertility issues in humans, researchers believe.

Written by Ruth Williams

Image by Dr Tim DuBuc

Centre for Chromosome Biology, School of Natural Sciences, National University of Ireland Galway, Galway, Ireland

Image copyright held by the original authors

Research published in Science, February 2020

A Very Short Fact: On this day in 1997, Scottish scientists successfully cloned Dolly the Sheep, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell.

“Animal cloning really hit the headlines in 1997 when a similar technique to that developed by Briggs and King was used to make Dolly the sheep. The originator, Ian Wilmut, worked at an agricultural research station, the Roslin Institute, near Edinburgh, Scotland, and had been principally interested in improving the methods for introducing genes into farm animals. He was able to take a nucleus from a sheep tissue culture cell and transplant into the enucleated oocyte of a ewe. Since sheep are mammals, the resulting embryo needs to be transferred back into the uterus of another ewe who serves as a surrogate mother. Only a very small proportion of the nuclear transfer embryos developed, but one was born and survived to achieve media immortality as Dolly. Over the next few years, many other species of mammal were cloned by similar methods, including mice, rats, cats, hamsters, pigs, and cattle. The method is now known as somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), a somatic cell being any cell that is not a germ cell.”

[P.36-37- Stem Cells: A Very Short Introduction by Jonathan Slack].

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-Somatic Therapy (2)-

Sandra had her own clinic in Surrey. She was a qualified professional physiotherapist who had passed so many exams as well as the national practitioners qualifying examination. She seemed to study real hard.

There was a real reason for her to study so hard. She had suffered for domestic violent by her husband in the past. In the end, she was fallen down the stairs after badly beaten up by him. She was critically injured and hospitalized for many months. It had taken her for years to recover even after she discharged the hospital.

She always spoke calmly in a steady tone of voice. You could not imagine that she had been through such a tragedy from the look of her delicate figure. The wall in her clinic was covered by a number of her certificates. That proved that she had studied contentiously on every aspect of physical therapy to overcome such a painful past event.

Recently, I have come across with PTSD and Somatic therapy.  And Sandra’s theory has finally made a sense to me.

–ソマティックセラピー（２）–

サンドラは、イギリスのサリー地方で、フィジオセラピーの診療所を開業していた。国家試験はもちろんのこと色々な試験に合格して、かなりの勉強と経験を積んだ優秀なフィジオセラピストだった。

彼女がそこまで優秀になったのには、確固とした理由があった。彼女は夫にひどいDVを受けて離婚した過去があった。最終的に、ひどく殴られ蹴られた後に、階段の上から下まで突き落とされ重体となり、長期入院をしたそうだ。その後も正常に戻るまで何年もかかったと言う。

いつも、トーンを変える事なく静かで冷静な物言いで、痩せて小さな体からは、とても想像できない様な、凄まじい過去だった。

だから、彼女は自分の傷が痛めば痛むほど、これでもかこれでもかと勉強する事で自分自身を癒していったのかもしれない。壁が埋まるほど賞状がそれを物語っていた。

The Scientific Research Notes of S. Sunkavally. Years: 1986 - 1990.

The Scientific Research Notes of S. Sunkavally. Years: 1986 - 1990.