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Focuses on the sixth-floor lab in Building No. 85 at Seoul National University in Seoul, Korea, where stem cell research is conducted by Woo Suk Hwang. Description of the techniques that are used to grow stem cells; Controversy surrounding the methods that Hwang uses; Description of the process called somatic cell nuclear transfer, or therapeutic cloning; Potential advantages of using this process to create stem cells that are unique to a patient; Differences in government policy regarding stem cell research in South Korea and the United States.

Discusses various approaches to cloning. Research at the Roslin Institute in Midlothian, Scotland; Cloning of sheep from cultured cells of an embryo; Previous methods of cloning; Dolly as the first mammal to be cloned from an adult; Molecular basis of cloning; Steps taken to make donor and recipient cells compatible; Limitations for cloning by nuclear transfer; Easy ways to produce transgenic animals; Chemical treatment to make cloning easier. INSETS: Is Quiescence the Key to Cloning?;Now, Cloned Mice.

The article discusses the relationship between nuclear transplantation and cell differentiation. In a nuclear-transplant experiment, the nucleus of a specialized cell is inserted into an unfertilized egg whose nucleus has been removed. The methods used to transplant living cell nuclei into eggs are discussed. An analysis of whether or not genes are lost in the course of normal cell differentiation is offered.

The author reports that, a decade after the cloning of the lamb, Dolly and after the cloning of dozens of animals since, it has become clear that all are in one way or another defective. Nuclear transfer, the process by which mammalian cloning is achieved, is compared to a lottery. The most common defect in clones is called large-offspring syndrome. Most of cloning errors can be traced to a process known as DNA methylation. INSETS: Dolly's creator;How to Clone A Tasty T-Bone.

The article discusses the birth of a baby boy using a technique that incorporates DNA from three people. Topics include a description of the technique and the mother's genes with Leigh syndrome, an explanation of the pronuclear transfer as well as the spindle nuclear transfer, and safety for the baby as a concern. Also mentioned are John Zhang of New Hope Fertility Center and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine's Scientific Congress.

The article reports that two teams of researchers, one led by Young Gie Chung of the CHA University in Seoul, South Korea and one by Dieter Egli of the New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF), used cloning methods to transform human adult cells into embryonic stem cells. Topics include details of the somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) technique, the body's human leukocyte antigen (HLA) system, and potential use of the technique to treat diseases.

The author describes how informal chats between research workers in a Dublin, Ireland-based bar in 1987 provided the catalyst for his line of research that led to the birth of Dolly the sheep, the first clone of an adult mammal. He shares his views about the process and aim of cloning experiments and the potential importance of methods for the cloning of mammals. He also highlights nuclear transfer experiments carried out in livestock species and laboratory mice since the birth of Dolly.

The article examines the use of nuclear transfer in making custom-matched lines of cells. Based on biological process of reprogramming, nuclear transfer was the same mechanism used which produced Dolly the sheep and other cloned animals. On the other hand, Wake Forest University researches in Winston-Salem, North Carolina has discovered one type of adult stem cell that offers complementary approach to embryonic stem cell research.

The article focuses on the morality of stem research pursued by the scientific community in an effort to develop new treatment for diseases. The author talks about the development of the scientific procedure called Altered Nuclear Transfer-Oocyte Assisted Reprogramming (ANT-OAR). He cites the prominent personalities who are defenders of the ANT-OAR. Biologically speaking, totipotency in a cell is a necessary and sufficient condition for concluding that the cell is a human embryo. Finally, the cell's epigenetic identity is not a necessary condition for cellular identity.

The article discusses the issues tackled in the debate on human cloning and stem cells in Australia. The sources of human stem cells, the public's views regarding human embryo and some consensus about it were discussed. Australia developed laws against these researches, the Prohibition of Human cloning Act 2002 and the Research Involving Human Embryos Act 2002. The debate focused on the issue regarding the stem cells' usage for therapy. The possibility of reproductive use of human embryonic stem cells and that its not necessary to use embryonic stem cells were pointed out. Several problems in the Prohibition of Human Cloning Act 2002 were mentioned.

The article reports on developments related to stem cells. The key properties of a stem cell and its potential to replace dead or damaged cells in diseased tissue were investigated. The different types of stem cells, their properties, how they were discovered, and their potential use for repair and regeneration were discussed. Explanations about the embryonic stem cells, where it was derived, what are its features, and its importance in biomedical research as experiments with mice show. Recent researches on embryonic stem cells and a discussion about stem cell differentiation and nuclear transfer proved the importance of this science for medical research.

The article presents information on Ian Wilmut, a scientist known for his pioneering work in somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), which produced the cloned sheep known as Dolly. Wilmut has turned his focus to induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells). These are produced by a technique developed by researcher Shinya Yamanaka which transforms adult cells back into a stem-cell-like condition.

Reports the development of a microchip capable of automatically creating cloned embryos by Aegen Biosciences in California. Ease of performing nuclear transfer; Details on the nucleation mechanism; Likelihood of creating human embryo.

Discusses misunderstandings about science held by critics of cloning. Ethical issues related to cloning and genetic engineering; Technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer; Identical personhood myth; Playing God myth.

Looks at the use of the nuclear transfer technique used to produce organs for transplant without needing a donor. Same technique used for cloning; Description of the process; Reduction of the problem of immune rejection due to the cloning from the patient's own cells; Possible impact on transplant organ shortages.

Reports on the University of Pennsylvania's transplantation of cells that produce sperm, which would allow mammals to father multiple offspring years after their death. Researchers' transplantation of sperm-producing cells called spermatogonia from rat testes into mice testes; Deep-freezing of spermatogonia in liquid nitrogen for 156 days; Genetic markings of transplanted cells.

Focuses on reproduction and cloning technologies. Practice of nuclear transplantation; Application of parthenogenesis; Discovery of imprinting.

The article focuses on the potential of stem cell-based therapies. Topics discussed include advancements in research about clinical application of stem cells, such as the paper "Embryonic stem cell lines derived from human blastocysts," by group lead by doctor James Thomson, several types of stem cells such as multipotent and pluripotent, and the somatic cell nuclear transfer.

The article reports on the consideration by the Great Britain Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) of the approval of new in vitro fertilization (IVF) technologies to prevent mitochondrial genetic diseases by transferring the egg nucleus into a donor egg. Safety and ethical concerns include the possible transfer of faulty maternal mitochondrial DNA, whether the mitochondrial donor could be considered a third parent, and germ-line changes to future generations.

The article reports that researchers at the Department of Bioethics at Case Western Reserve University and at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute argue on the lack of compensation for human egg donors. It says that the argument is on the lack of compensation which proves to be an obstacle for human stem cell research in U.S. It mentions that scientists searched for the ways to produce stem cells that have the same potential but do not use embryos such as the somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT).

The article focuses on the challenges encountered by researchers in human stem cell research in the U.S. Robert Lanza, vice president of medical and scientific development at Advanced Cell Technology, reveals that there is a shortage of accessible or quality stem cell lines. Also, some states restrict funds to investigations of adult stem cells. Another problem is that some are opposed to the somatic nuclear transfer that starts with oocytes. INSET: SHIFTING FEDERAL POLICIES.

The article reports on the production of neurons from stem cells and their importance for the normal function of the brain. The explanation on the role of stem cells in producing neurons and an example of this is in olfactory system is discussed. The environment's role in evaluating neurogenesis and the regulation of neurons for survival is vital because there's still need for selecting which cells can integrate and function.

The article reports on how embryonic stem cells are created and the stages of embryonic stem cell production. The stem cells were extracted from the excess embryos made for in vitro fertilization. There are new human embryonic stem cell lines that have been generated. The explanations of their use is discussed.

The article comments on a debate about the ethics of cloning in Australia. The discussions included the potential benefits of therapeutic cloning. The participants discussed what therapeutic cloning is, what it can do which can also be done in other means, future prospects for application, and the genetic diseases it might cure.

This article focuses on Xenotransplantation.Xenotransplantation is the transplantation of cells, tissues or organs from one species to another. The chronic shortage of available human organs and long waiting lists for people requiring organ and tissue donations are often cited by the scientific and medical research communities as justification for the need to commit to ongoing research into Xenotransplantation. The National Health and Medical Research Council recently drafted guidelines for clinical research into this relatively new area. Xenotransplantation raises the issue of whether humans have the right to use non-human animals as tools for research and as a source for human spare parts.

The article focuses on a method to clone animals using frozen tissue. It states that the procedure involves replacing the nuclei of egg cells with that of a mouse or animals being cloned before being implanted. It also notes that this discovery is said to increase the possibility of restoring endangered species and revive extinct ones.

The article reports on somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). Korean researcher Woo Suk Hwang reported being able to create a human embryonic stem cell line using SCNT in 2004, when in reality he hadn't. However, Children's Hospital Boston and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute found in 2007 that SCNT was a new method for creating embryonic stem cells.

Focuses on ways in which scientists may be able to harvest embryonic stem cells without harming the embryos. Use of a process called altered nuclear transfer, in which the nucleus of an adult cell is programmed to turn off genes vital to the development of an embryo, inserted into an egg cell, and activated by electricity, thus preventing the egg from developing any further than a clump of embryonic cells; Question on the weighing of morality between creating a doomed abomination and destroying embryos that have no future anyway.

Focuses on the embryonic stem cell research and human cloning initiated by Hwang Woo Suk of Seoul National University. Information on the somatic cell nuclear transfer process; Comment from Leon Kass, chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, on the issue in human cloning; Political aspects of the issue.

Provides details on stem cell research and potential benefits to the treatment of genetic disorders. Potential for a stem cell to develop into any type of cell that is damaged in a patient with diabetes, Alzheimer's, or other disorders; Challenges to researchers developing the therapeutic use of stem cells; Controversy surrounding the harvesting of stem cells from human embryos; Potential development of therapeutic cloning techniques; Discussion of nuclear transfer research.

The article looks at therapeutic cloning. In terms of therapeutic cloning (otherwise known as nuclear transfer), the most notable achievement so far comes from Woo Suk Hwang of Seoul National University. Hwang's accomplishment highlights the enormous technical difficulty in working with human cells. Researchers must remove the inner cell mass of human embryonic stem cells from the outer (preplacental) cell layer of the blastocyst, or else the cells stop dividing. The most efficient--and the toughest cells to obtain--are embryonic stem cells. Next come the relatively immature but rare and inaccessible somatic stem cells, followed by the more accessible but mature differentiated cells that make up tissues. Now researchers need to find cells that are more efficient than neurons and more practical than embryonic stem cells. INSET: A LONG WAY TO GO.

The author reports on the controversy surrounding a new infertility treatment involving techniques similar to those used in cloning. Depending on whom you ask, the experiment announced at a Texas medical conference last week was a potential breakthrough for infertile women, a tragic failure or a dangerous step closer to the nightmare scenario of human cloning. There's truth to all these points of view. Infertility was clearly the motivation when Chinese doctors used a new technique to help one of their countrywomen get pregnant. Using a technique developed by Dr. James Grifo at New York University, Dr. Zhuang Guanglun of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou took the patient's fertilized egg, scooped out the chromosome-bearing nuclear material and put it in a donated egg whose nucleus had been removed. In this more benign environment, development proceeded normally, and the woman became pregnant with triplets who carried a mix of her DNA and her husband's--pretty much like any normal baby. What has some doctors and ethicists upset is that this so-called nuclear-transfer technique has also been used to produce clones, starting with Dolly the sheep. The only significant difference is that with cloning, the inserted nucleus comes from a single, usually adult, cell, and the resulting offspring is genetically identical to the parent. Concern over potential risks is why the Food and Drug Administration created a stringent approval process for such research in 2001--a process that Grifo found so onerous that he stopped working on the technique and gave it to the researchers in China, where it was subsequently banned. The bottom line, say critics, is that perfecting a technique that could be used for human cloning, even if it were developed for another purpose, is just a bad idea--an assertion Zhuang rejects.

Editorial. Comments on the eradication of the word clone in biological science. Replacement of the term therapeutic cloning with nuclear transplantation; Impression regarding the eagerness of scientists to clone human beings; Confusion arising from the change of the term.

The article discusses the development in cloning, focusing on the development and use of the technique nuclear transfer by Shoukhrat Mitalipov and colleagues at Oregon Health & Science University to produce stem cells from cloned human embryos, the same method used by researchers in the development of the cloned sheep named Dolly. It explores the muted response to the public reaction to human cloning, highlighting the need to discuss the ethical problems associated with the procedure.

The article discusses the efforts of scientists to create a clone of the extinct woolly mammoth. Topics covered include the success in cloning the last Pyrenean ibex in 2009, possible use of nuclear transfer and gene splicing to create a woolly mammoth clone, Siberian researcher Sergey Zimov's Pleistocene Park project and the discovery of frozen mammoth with possible liquid blood by Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk and his team of Russian scientists in Siberia.

The article discusses the feasibility of a technique for correcting inherited diseases caused by mutant cell organelles, called mitochondria, in which the nuclear DNA of one woman is inserted into the donor egg cell of another woman. Topics include a overview of the function of mitochondria, the development of the technique by Shoukhrat Mitalipov and colleagues at Oregon Health & Science University in Beaverton, and a diagram illustrating mitochondrial substitution.

The article mentions a paper by Shoukhrat Mitalipov and colleagues concerning a technique intended to eliminate mitochondrial diseases that would allow children born with three genetic parents. It states mothers contribute both half of the DNA and mitochondrial DNA to her offspring while sperm do not contain mitochondrial DNA. It comments there were abnormalities in over half of experimental human eggs that had their nuclei transplanted which was higher than in experiments with other species.

The article discusses research on the benefits of equine cloning at facilities that are equipped with a neonatal intensive care unit. It references a study by Katrin Hinrichs and colleagues, published in the May 2010 issue of the "Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association." Findings show that complications from a cloning technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) can be minimized at such facilities.

The article reports on a proposed legislation authorizing the federal government to fund human research cloning in the making. U.S. Congresswoman Diana DeGette admitted in an interview with the publication "CQ Today" published on April 27, 2009 that she, Congressman Michael Castle and others are drafting a bill that would that would fund research in creating human embryos using somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). Comment on this proposal from National Right to Life Committee Legislative Director Douglas Johnson is offered.

An interview with William Hurlbut, a physician and ethicist, is presented. He explained what influenced him to develop altered nuclear transfer (ANT). When asked if ANT really produce pluri-potent stem cells, he said yes and cited a study conducted on ANT application. He also discussed the ethical and moral aspects of neuroscience.

The article presents comments on a bill which will amend the state's Infertility Treatment Act to allow cloning by somatic cell nuclear transfer in Australia. It is reported that there are some cynical financial calculations by bio-technology interests behind all of the expressions of compassion and concern for scientific progress. It has been suggested that this Victorian cloning bill should be opposed because cloning in itself is an offence against human dignity.

The article presents the case study of Nick Andersen, a 19-year-old race car driver who received a rare nerve transplant from his mother. The guardrail ripped through the car's driver-side door. It tore off Nick's left leg below the knee, crushed his right leg, and shredded his left arm, leaving his left hand paralyzed. Nick's doctors suggested amputating his left hand, but his family refused, hoping they could find a way to restore his hand. Allan Belzberg, a surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore performed an autologous transplant on him.

The article presents scenarios of the future applications of therapeutic cloning. The stem cells which have matured into islet cells can be grafted into the pancreas to cure juvenile diabetes. A leukemia patient can have his own matching graft of bone marrow cells generated, to kill off the cancer cells in his body. Embryonic stem cells can be matured into dopamine-producing brain cells to cure a patient with Parkinson's disease.

The article focuses on a study in which researchers used nuclear transfer (NT) to make 15 cow embryos. The researchers compared these to the cells used as nucleus donors for the NT embryos, 15 embryos fertilized by in vitro fertilization in a petri dish, and 14 embryos fertilized naturally through artificial insemination (AI). After 7 days of growth, the genes in the cloned embryos had switched to an expression pattern 99% similar to that of the AI embryos, the team reports in the November 2005 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This article reports that to methods that create embryonic stem (ES) cells without destroying viable embryos can work, at least in mice. But neither method resolves all the ethical questions, scientists and ethicists warn. In a paper published on October 16, 2005 online in the journal "Nature," developmental biologists Rudolf Jaenisch and Alexander Meissner of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge demonstrated a new technique that derives ES cells through nuclear transfer without creating any viable embryos. By knocking out a gene called Cdx2 in a skin cell and then fusing that with an oocyte, Jaenisch and Meissner created cells that could give rise to ES cells, but could not implant in a uterus and therefore had no chance to develop into a full organism.

Discusses the proposals by the U.S. Council on Bioethics, for obtaining embryonic stem cells without destroying living human embryos. Steps in generating non-embryonic entities that can serve as a source of stem cells through a process termed Altered Nuclear Transfer; Altered Nuclear Transfer-Oocyte Assisted Reprogramming which makes use of a process known as epigenetic reprogramming to convert an adult cell into an embryonic stem cell.

Presents a letter to the editor commenting on an article about altered nuclear transfer, which appeared in the March 2005 issue.

Focuses on issues arising from therapeutic cloning, a process of creating human embryos by installing nuclei from adult cells into human eggs whose nuclei had been removed, developed by South Korean researchers. Outcome of a United Nations resolution for global treaty that would completely ban reproductive cloning proposed by U.S. President George W. Bush; Plan of Italy to introduce a compromise resolution that would prohibit human cloning.

Comments on several issues related to research on embryonic stem cells. Moral aspects of the creation of cells; Move of U.S. President George W. Bush to limit federal funding for embryonic-stem-cell research in 2001; Opposition to the congressional mood of criminalizing and banning all nuclear-transfer research.