News tagged with somatic cells

S.Korean, Russian scientists bid to clone mammoth

Russian and South Korean scientists have signed a deal on joint research intended to recreate a woolly mammoth, an animal which last walked the earth some 10,000 years ago.

Biology / Biotechnology

created Mar 13, 2012 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (37) | comments 21

Move over, sponges: New evidence confirms Placozoans are the closest living surrogate to the ancestor of all animals

A new and comprehensive analysis confirms that the evolutionary relationships among animals are not as simple as previously thought. The traditional idea that animal evolution has followed a trajectory from ...

Biology /

created Jan 27, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (13) | comments 1

Somatic stem cells obtained from skin cells for first time ever

Breaking new ground, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Münster, Germany, have succeeded in obtaining somatic stem cells from fully differentiated somatic cells. Stem ...

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Mar 22, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (12) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Recruitment of reproductive features into other cell types may underlie extended lifespan in animals

In the sense that organisms existing today are connected through a chain of life - through their parents, grandparents and other ancestors - almost a billion years back to the first animals of the pre-Cambrian era, an animal's ...

Biology / Biotechnology

created Jun 07, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (8) | comments 0

World first: Chinese scientists create pig stem cells

Scientists have managed to induce cells from pigs to transform into pluripotent stem cells - cells that, like embryonic stem cells, are capable of developing into any type of cell in the body. It is the first time in the ...

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Jun 02, 2009 | popularity 4.2 / 5 (5) | comments 4

South Korean researchers say they cloned endangered cow

South Korean researchers said Wednesday they have successfully cloned a rare local species of cow in a government-funded project.

Biology / Biotechnology

created Jun 16, 2010 | popularity 5 / 5 (4) | comments 0

Researchers generate functional neurons from somatic cells

In a new study, researchers were able to generate functionally mature motor neurons from induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, which are engineered from adult somatic cells and can differentiate into most other cell types. ...

Biology /

created Feb 24, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (3) | comments 0

Researchers identify key proteins needed for ovulation

Researchers from the National Institutes of Health and other institutions have identified in mice two proteins essential for ovulation to take place.

Medicine & Health / Medical research

created May 14, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (3) | comments 0

Researchers find reproductive germ cells survive and thrive in transplants, even among species

Reproductive researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia have succeeded in isolating and transplanting pure populations of the immature cells that enable male ...

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Dec 15, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (3) | comments 1

Scientists discover marker indicating the developmental potential of stem cells

Researchers in China are reporting that they have found a way to determine which somatic cells -- or differentiated body cells -- that have been reprogrammed into a primordial, embryonic-like state are the most viable for ...

Chemistry / Biochemistry

created Apr 16, 2010 | popularity 5 / 5 (3) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Not all clones the same

Despite their name, not all clones are created equal. This is especially true for the products of somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), which entails the transplantation of the nucleus from a mature somatic ...

Biology / Biotechnology

created Nov 05, 2010 | popularity 5 / 5 (3) | comments 0

When every photon counts

The eyes of nocturnal mammals contain particularly large numbers of the highly light-sensitive rods, the photoreceptor type used for night vision. This allows the detection of light levels millions of times ...

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Apr 20, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 0

Specific small RNA pathways protect germ line from transposons

Cells of higher organisms are in a constant struggle against some of their own DNA - repeated bits of DNA sequence called transposons that have infiltrated host genomes over the eons. Transposons damage the rest of the genome ...

Biology / Biotechnology

created May 05, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 0

Tumor suppressor pulls double shift as reprogramming watchdog

A collaborative study by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies uncovered that the tumor suppressor p53, which made its name as "guardian of the genome", not only stops cells that could become ...

Medicine & Health / Cancer

created Aug 09, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 1

Biologists determine microRNA activity is suppressed in mouse ovum

Biologists at the University of Pennsylvania studying oocytes in mice, the immature egg cells necessary for sexual reproduction, have demonstrated an unusual behavior in microRNA, or miRNA, activity that may be the first ...

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Feb 03, 2010 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Somatic cell

Somatic cells are any cells forming the body of an organism, as opposed to germline cells. In mammals, germline cells (also known as "gametes") are the spermatozoa and ova which fuse during fertilization to produce a cell called a zygote, from which the entire mammalian embryo develops. Every other cell type in the mammalian body—apart from the sperm and ova, the cells from which they are made (gametocytes) and undifferentiated stem cells—is a somatic cell: internal organs, skin, bones, blood, and connective tissue are all made up of somatic cells.

The word "somatic" is derived from the Greek word sōma, meaning "body".

For more information about Somatic cell, read the full article at Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Related topics: stem cells