Black Woman The First To Spawn Imortal Cells (interesting read)
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The Prime Minister
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Henrietta Lacks’ ‘Immortal’ Cells
Journalist Rebecca Skloot’s new book investigates how a poor black tobacco farmer had a groundbreaking impact on modern medicine
* By Sarah Zielinski
* Smithsonian.com, January 22, 2010
Medical researchers use laboratory-grown human cells to learn the intricacies of how cells work and test theories about the causes and treatment of diseases. The cell lines they need are “immortal”—they can grow indefinitely, be frozen for decades, divided into different batches and shared among scientists. In 1951, a scientist at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, created the first immortal human cell line with a tissue sample taken from a young black woman with cervical cancer. Those cells, called HeLa cells, quickly became invaluable to medical research—though their donor remained a mystery for decades. In her new book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, journalist Rebecca Skloot tracks down the story of the source of the amazing HeLa cells, Henrietta Lacks, and documents the cell line's impact on both modern medicine and the Lacks family.
Who was Henrietta Lacks?
She was a black tobacco farmer from southern Virginia who got cervical cancer when she was 30. A doctor at Johns Hopkins took a piece of her tumor without telling her and sent it down the hall to scientists there who had been trying to grow tissues in culture for decades without success. No one knows why, but her cells never died.
Why are her cells so important?
Henrietta’s cells were the first immortal human cells ever grown in culture. They were essential to developing the polio vaccine. They went up in the first space missions to see what would happen to cells in zero gravity. Many scientific landmarks since then have used her cells, including cloning, gene mapping and in vitro fertilization.
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Henrietta-Lacks-Immortal-Cells.html#ixzz0eLZBl87g
Journalist Rebecca Skloot’s new book investigates how a poor black tobacco farmer had a groundbreaking impact on modern medicine
* By Sarah Zielinski
* Smithsonian.com, January 22, 2010
Medical researchers use laboratory-grown human cells to learn the intricacies of how cells work and test theories about the causes and treatment of diseases. The cell lines they need are “immortal”—they can grow indefinitely, be frozen for decades, divided into different batches and shared among scientists. In 1951, a scientist at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, created the first immortal human cell line with a tissue sample taken from a young black woman with cervical cancer. Those cells, called HeLa cells, quickly became invaluable to medical research—though their donor remained a mystery for decades. In her new book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, journalist Rebecca Skloot tracks down the story of the source of the amazing HeLa cells, Henrietta Lacks, and documents the cell line's impact on both modern medicine and the Lacks family.
Who was Henrietta Lacks?
She was a black tobacco farmer from southern Virginia who got cervical cancer when she was 30. A doctor at Johns Hopkins took a piece of her tumor without telling her and sent it down the hall to scientists there who had been trying to grow tissues in culture for decades without success. No one knows why, but her cells never died.
Why are her cells so important?
Henrietta’s cells were the first immortal human cells ever grown in culture. They were essential to developing the polio vaccine. They went up in the first space missions to see what would happen to cells in zero gravity. Many scientific landmarks since then have used her cells, including cloning, gene mapping and in vitro fertilization.
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Henrietta-Lacks-Immortal-Cells.html#ixzz0eLZBl87g
Comments
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Not surprising, she had cancer, meaning her tumor cell's DNA lost their telomeres; which normally regulate mitosis, and eventually lead to death by limiting the maximum number of times the cells divide.
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fiat_money wrote: »Not surprising, she had cancer, meaning her tumor cell's DNA lost their telomeres; which normally regulate mitosis, and eventually lead to death by limiting the maximum number of times the cells divide.
how the ? u know this ? I thought you were a Computer Science major lol -
fiat_money wrote: »Not surprising, she had cancer, meaning her tumor cell's DNA lost their telomeres; which normally regulate mitosis, and eventually lead to death by limiting the maximum number of times the cells divide.
Google University
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fiat_money wrote: »Not surprising, she had cancer, meaning her tumor cell's DNA lost their telomeres; which normally regulate mitosis, and eventually lead to death by limiting the maximum number of times the cells divide.
Haha. This ? always comes in and destroys the mystery in ? . -
Google University
Google U need to teach their students proper usage of a semi-colon. -
fiat_money wrote: »Not surprising, she had cancer, meaning her tumor cell's DNA lost their telomeres; which normally regulate mitosis, and eventually lead to death by limiting the maximum number of times the cells divide.
So if the cancer was supposed to have limited the number of times her cells could divide, then how were hers able to be taken and replicated ad infinitum? -
Nah, I major in Computer & Electrical Engineering. And I have an excellent memory.how the ? u know this ? I thought you were a Computer Science major lol -
The Prime Minister wrote: »So if the cancer was supposed to have limited the number of times her cells could divide, then how were hers able to be taken and replicated ad infinitum?
Is the grammatically incorrect semi-colon throwing you off or do you just not know how to read? -
CASH RULES wrote: »Google U need to teach their students proper usage of a semi-colon.
yeah...all it does is replace words like but and and.
I knows... -
CASH RULES wrote: »Is the grammatically incorrect semi-colon throwing you off or do you just not know how to read?
That......... -
Normally, cells have a finite number of times they divide based on the length of their telomeres. When someone has cancer, their cell's telomeres keep growing longer, so their cells don't stop dividing. If cancerous had a limited number of times they could perform mitosis, eventually the all cancer would die out on its own.The Prime Minister wrote: »So if the cancer was supposed to have limited the number of times her cells could divide, then how were hers able to be taken and replicated ad infinitum? -
fiat_money wrote: »Normally, cells have a finite number of times they divide based on the length of their telomeres. When someone has cancer, their cell's telomeres keep growing longer, so their cells don't stop dividing. If cancerous had a limited number of times they could perform mitosis, eventually the all cancer would die out on its own.
That's not so complicated after all. Still though, her story is pretty interesting when you consider all the biological testing that was being run on Black folk back in the fifties--without their knowing. -
The semi-colon was mainly used to join the clause about her cancer with the clause about the function of telomeres; the semi-colon was also used to prevent confusion based on both clauses using multiple commas.CASH RULES wrote: »Google U need to teach their students proper usage of a semi-colon. -
See! See! See!
The first immortal cells was black Egyptians! How u like that cracka ass cracka ? ass ? ! -
"immortal"
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fiat_money wrote: »Normally, cells have a finite number of times they divide based on the length of their telomeres. When someone has cancer, their cell's telomeres keep growing longer, so their cells don't stop dividing. If cancerous had a limited number of times they could perform mitosis, eventually the all cancer would die out on its own.
oh ok... Thats wassup -
SMH @ This mistake. They lost their telomeres' ends, not the telomeres themselves.fiat_money wrote: »Not surprising, she had cancer, meaning her tumor cell's DNA lost their telomeres; which normally regulate mitosis, and eventually lead to death by limiting the maximum number of times the cells divide. -
I read this,they stole the tumor and examined on it experimenting,then told her daughter later on what they did to find out some stuff.
