Stem Cells with Dr. Howard Pryor

In a rather interesting and often arresting book called “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” the author states that the chickens in these horrible modern style chicken farms, which are of course often the subject of urban myth, are genetically identical.  Well it just so happens that one huge benefit of being in The Dandy Warhols is that some of the brightest minds on earth are big fans who have become great friends.  So I went ahead and emailed Dr. Howard Pryor who leads a lab of the leading stem cell researchers on earth right now.

You might know his work because of South Park’s “Eek-a-penis.”

[pro-player width=’400′ height=’300′ type=’MP4′]http://dandywarhols.com/video/ctt.mouse-penis.mp4[/pro-player]

Yup, they’re the ones who grew a human ear on the back of a mouse.

Anyhoo, I emailed him this:

Hey man,  I just read that all the chickens in each modern chicken farm (about 20k) are genetically identical.  Does that mean clones?  Does that have anything to do with stem cells?  Does cloning use the same science and pieces, parts or whathaveyou as regrowing a damaged ear drum or shinbone?

and he said this:

Well I am no poultry husbandry expert, but I bet they are using the term identical a little loosely. They probably mean that the chickens are so inbred that they are extremely similar (so that they taste the same, produce uniform eggs, etc…).

Cloning in the media means to take the nuclear contents from a normal adult cell and insert it into a fertilized egg that has had its nuclear contents removed.  The egg is then implanted and allowed to gestate to term. The resulting animal is a clone of the animal that donated the nuclear contents.

Stem cells are a bit more complicated and require an intermediate step. First a stem cell is extracted from an embryo of interest, lets say a black mouse. The cell is then implanted into the embryo of a white mouse. The resulting animal is black and white in splotches. Two black and white animals are breed together and the results will be either all-black black/white or all-white mice. All of the all-black mice will all be essentially identical. This is caused by meiosis. When the hybrid black/white mouse is making its gametes (sperm/egg) only half the genes are included either the black or the white genes. When a black egg in a black/white mouse joins with a black sperm the resulting animal is formed
from the same genetic material that was found in the original embryo. Since, embryonic stem cells are naturally proliferative you could expand the original supply of cells; implant them into a large number of embryos; and eventually establish an enormous genetically identical colony of mice. (See Charles River Laboratories).

Beneath all the smoke and BS around stem cells its actually quite a fascinating field.

As for arm and ear projects, we currently use adult cells and populate a scaffold made of normal extra-cellular matrix shaped into the desired structure. We have advanced to the stem cell level yet. But its coming…

COURTNEY TAYLOR-TAYLOR