Odyssey

When the era of cloning in Scotland last February scientists expected that research would proceed slowly and the practical applications were years away. But the pace of discovery has been much faster than expected. I'm Gretchen helper today on Odyssey will talk about the major discoveries and advances in science that have occurred since the birth of Dolly where research is headed and where it could go and what implications it has. Work human reproduction. That's today on Odyssey next after the news from NPR here on WBEZ Chicago. From National Public Radio News in Washington I'm Craig Wyndham. The Supreme Court today sided with independent counsel Kenneth Starr in two rulings regarding the investigation of President Clinton. The court let stand a ruling that says presidential adviser Bruce Lindsey and other White House attorneys cannot refuse to answer a federal grand jury's questions about possible criminal conduct by government officials. And the high court refused to shield Secret Service officers

from having to testify before federal grand juries about matters they see or hear while protecting the dissenting from that decision were justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Brier. Mr. Clinton's only appointees to the court in other cases the justices sidestepped a showdown over a two wishing voucher plan for students who attend private schools in Milwaukee. Even those who attend schools affiliated with religious groups. And then there was one Congressman Bob Livingston of Louisiana is the sole remaining candidate to 6 and 8 seed Newt Gingrich as speaker of the house. NPR's Brian Naylor has more. There are two hundred twenty three House Republicans and Cox says Livingston has commitments from over one hundred ten. Cox told ABC Good Morning America The truth is the vote is in. Bob Livingston is going to be our next speaker and I'm withdrawing my name for that reason. Livingston is chairman of the House approach. And predicted yesterday he would win the job on Friday Speaker Newt Gingrich abruptly decided to resign from the post following the election a loss of five House seats to Democrats. Other members of the House Republican leadership team are

also under challenge. Oklahoma Congressman Steve Largent is angling for majority leader Dick Armey his job and another Oklahoma Republican J.C. Watts is challenging John Boehner for chairmanship of the House Republican Conference. Republicans hold their leadership elections next week. Brian Naylor NPR News the Capitol. One crew member of a Navy jet is dead and three others are missing in the Atlantic after their electronic warfare plane collided with another aircraft on the deck of the US S. enterprise. NPR's Martha Raddatz reports. The prowler crew which was practicing night carrier landings was on its final approach but had been waved off or told to abort the landing. But it was too late. The aircraft hit the tail of an S-3 Viking which was taxiing on deck. The prowler then went out of control and plunged over the side of the carrier but not before the four crew members ejected. The body of one has been found. A search continues for the other three aviators. The two crewmembers of the S-3 Viking ejected as well they suffered minor injuries after landing on the deck of the carrier. A subsequent

fire destroyed the S3. The Enterprise was about one hundred twenty miles off the coast of Virginia when the accident occurred. The carrier is on its way to the Mediterranean in the Persian Gulf for a six month deployment. Martha Raddatz NPR News Washington. On Wall Street at this hour the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 88 points in moderate trading on the Nasdaq the composite index is down about six points. This is NPR News. NPR's business update there's been some slippage in stock prices today as a new week begins for the financial markets. Investors seem to be taking some profits as NPR's Jack Speer reports. Ali what's been a month worth of nearly continuous gains for the market. Blue chip stocks are down slightly today nearly 100 points the Dow Jones Industrial Average which gained three hundred eighty three points last week began moving lower shortly after the opening bell this morning. General Motors announced today that it has struck a 10 year deal with Alcan a Canadian aluminum company the multibillion dollar agreement comes at a time the company is planning to use increased amounts of aluminum in its automobiles to cut weight boost mileage and cut tell plant emissions. JP Morgan reportedly is about

to cut 5 percent of its workforce the financial firm says it will cut 750 jobs that's according to a report quoting sources in the Wall Street Journal and GP you a regional utility company based in New Jersey says it will sell 23 of its power plants to cite the energy is for one point seventy two billion dollars. Jack Speer NPR News Washington. Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers says time has run out for Russia to implement economic reforms. Summers says the U.S. is willing to help the Russian people with assistance such as emergency food aid but ultimately he said Russia will make her own destiny. Summers was speaking to a chemical industry group in Washington today. Fleet Financial is buying Merrill Lynch's specialist operations. The unit is a major dealer in blue chip stocks on the floor of the New York Exchange. No terms have been disclosed but the Wall Street Journal puts the price at one hundred fifty eight million dollars. Dow Corning has worked out details of a three point two billion dollar settlement over silicone breast implants. Women who claim that their implants caused medical ailments could get up to three hundred thousand dollars each. Under the plan if it's

approved by a judge and creditors. This is NPR. Support for NPR comes from Borders Books and Music. What in the world of knowledge within your reach. With over 200 locations across America. Eight hundred. 6 4 4 7 7 3 3. Good morning and welcome to odyssey on WBEZ Chicago nine one point five am. I'm Gretchen helper. You may have heard last week that scientists have discovered how to isolate and grow stem cells and differentiated embryonic cells which have the potential to develop into any type of cell. This discovery is just one piece of an increasingly complex and interesting mosaic of scientific work that has taken place in the field relating to human reproduction and development. Since the announcement last year that new surgeries in Scotland had gloomed in adult animal. Today in the program we're going to talk about the emerging scientific picture and the developments that have occurred

since the historic birth of the lamb named Dolly. Joining us to do so are Dr. Rex jism who is professor of Cell and Molecular Biology at Northwestern University and Dr. Eugene Pergamon head of the section of reproductive genetics at Northwestern University Good morning to both of you. Let's begin if we can by tying up some of the loose ends that no pun intended that that existed in the aftermath of the announcement that Dolly had been born there were overwhelmingly people were thrilled and excited or horrified or whatever but a few people were skeptical they just plain didn't believe that Dolly was in fact a clone. However they have now established that in fact he was a clone of an adult cell. Can you talk a little bit about how that came to be proven Dr. Chisholm. Yeah the way they did that was actually very much related to the way they do things like determine paternity in paternity tests what they did was they took DNA from the other cells that were used as the donor of the nucleus and they used satellite units as a

piece of DNA that exists many many many times in the genome. And what it means is that between different individuals that DNA is in different places in the genome. And so by analyzing what size those fragments are and where they're located just like they did in the O.J. trial you can see all of the ladders that they showed there they were able to determine whether or not the pattern of Dolly cells matched either the pattern of the donor embryo that the stem cell that that the egg was from or whether it was from the other cell that actually the nucleus was thought to come from. And the end of that experiment was that it was conclusively shown that the genetic pattern that you saw in the DNA gel by. Compared exactly to that of the other cells and not to that of the donor embryo now in order for this proof to be persuasive as evidence to be persuasive all they really needed to show was that Dolly was genetically identical to this lump of cells and that

this lump of cells were adult cells enough to prove what that who that animal had been or what that animal had been or what type of sheep or whether they were other cells or what have you but only that they were in fact adult cells. That's correct and in fact that begs the question of whether or not which was one of the big concerns. It was really an adult cell or whether hiding in that mass of adult cells there might have been a special cell called a stem cell and I guess we're talking about those a bit later are definitely that is that is that question decided or undecided that question still not decided that there's no way based on the genetic analysis of DNA to determine whether that cell was an embryonic cell or an adult cell. So from that standpoint that's still in a sense an open question although the subsequent success with the mice in Hawaii really argues that it's unlikely that it was a single stem cell that was hiding in there somewhere. OK we're going to talk about the mice in Hawaii but before we get to that there is another. Or was another issue

relating to Dolly that was up in the air. At the time it was one that had to do with what the facts were what the state of her Team years work. Can you explain what yours are and light was important to know what happened to them. Yeah it's kind of it's kind of an interesting story and it shows very nicely how this is going to really further our fundamental understanding of biological processes so that a tumor is a structure that's at the end of a chromosome so everybody knows chromosome is a structure that's got DNA in a lot of proteins around it that contains all of our genes. And because of the way that DNA is copied and remember every time a cell divides the DNA has to be copied precisely in one exact copy given to each daughter at that copying process a little bit of the end of the chromosome is lost and the tumor is a very special structure that exists to try to help the cell deal with the fact that this little bit of DNA is lost at the end of every time the DNA will get.

Bacteria. Interestingly have a solve this problem in a really interesting different way. That is they have circular chromosomes they don't have them. So the reason this whole issue is of great interest is that there are a couple of theories about aging that argue that one of the important contributors to the aging process is the continual shortening of the Steelers such that eventually the tumor gets short enough that now actually the DNA. Is messed up in such a way that a gene that is necessary for growth is lost. And that then would lead to senescence or cell death. So the idea is that if you take a nucleus from an adult animal that may have been through many of these divisions and its DNA shortened and shortened and shortened at the end that may be Dolly's off of the dolly would have a shortened life span because she started off with her culinary. So the fact that Dolly

ages is age normally argues that it's either that tumor got reset so its full length was re-established and that's a process that where the enzymes that are involved in that are known to be active in sight so that's a good possibility. Or I suppose the other possibility is that those ideas about aging are are wrong and I think that's still an area of controversy. OK so that nobody's gone in and actually looked at the DNA and you have to this this knowledge comes through inference. I don't know if it is actually possible to go in to look at the link of killers I just don't know if that's been done in Dolly's case. OK but Dr. Parkman you were saying that this whole notion of killers being related to aging is pretty controversial and not the only possibility. There's some data and some scientists who are not. I haven't confirmed the fact that there is this association between Humira shortening and and aging. Just to

add a point feel the ends of chromosomes of because chromosomes by nature when broken are sticky and healed in new ways in order to seal the more of the human ear serves that function. But I don't think I agree with the Jews and I don't think anyone is really analyze the silver dollar or other animals that have been groomed at this point I think it's something that could be easily done but it's likely given the aging process that has been observed with Ali that they have been somehow reset. And that's a very important question about the refitting of gene expression the resetting of specific dreams and chins like human. Why is that expand on that why is it if in fact they've been reset and they're back to their full length. I assume that one would conclude that that happened in the egg when the nucleus was translated to the egg the egg did that.

Well there's there's there's actually there's an experiment that that actually uses the same kind of genetic technology. And that was that scientists different scientists have now made a mouse which lacks the Jew that makes the protein that adds those killers on the chromosomes called the armories and those mice are normal. So that sort of argues against the up. There's another way to do that and we see that all the time in biology there are frequently many ways to do one task. And perhaps this suggests that that that that isn't as important as we think. Although there's a whole host of other kinds of experimental data that that says that it is very important so where we stand right now is that there's a controversy in the scientific community. It's a very reasonable idea that this is a contributor to aging. There are some very good data that says that it might be. And then there are some other data that says that it might not. And Dolly is just one piece of that data.

But the important part about Dolly is to begin to try to explain the process of prophecies by which the genetic information was reset because as a cell ages or matures one of the it is soon it differentiates in the soon particular functions. There are certain housekeeping genes that every single cell needs to have functioning in order to work properly. But then if it differentiates into a red blood cell or a muscle cell obviously in the course of that certain genes are turned on and certain genes are turned. This would seem to be in terms of the cloning or wholesale turning or it would be important for us to understand the molecular level just the nature of that kind of process. Because again it gives us on train to controlling the expressions of genes in general or dreams specifically. And that has some obvious medical and health implications. We're going to talk a little bit later about medical and health implications but let's move along through some of the other

science that has taken place already. We've mentioned the researchers in Hawaii who have now cloned 50 mice which I think represent three generations of clones. How does their technique it's much more successful so far than in the technique that produce Dolly how does it differ from that thing. It doesn't really differ in any substantial cut significant kind of way. What it is more of is a proof of principle it's a proof that Dolly wasn't a fluke and there was a lot of arguments that Dolly was a fluke that it might be hard to do in other organisms. And the fact that they were able to do it again many many times. And secondly that they were able to do it in a different organism the mouse I think really is a solid proof of principle that this is and indeed are real phenomena. But we're talking a little bit more about this issue of resetting the genetic clock or the genetic. Composition of the cell because one of the things that was special about what Wilma did was they treated the cells actually by a special process that put them into a

special stage in the cell cycle called G-0. It's sort of a holding stage. And. It was controversial about whether that was really an important part of the process or not and what the folks in Hawaii did was actually used very similar not exactly the same a very similar approach to do that. And that suggests that in fact it probably is an important part of the process and what's happening there is to expand a bit on what Dr. Perper was saying that if you think of a situation where you have a library that has all of the information the world in it and you decide that you're going to be interested in sports so you throw away the volumes of The Encyclopedia that contain science because the sports are all that matters to you. And that's really an example of what happens during cell differentiation. It doesn't really throw away but it sort of sticks on the back shelf it shuts them down in a way that's fairly permanent. However if that nucleus that adult nucleus which came from

another cell for example and is no longer going to need to make hair it shut down the genes for making hair. So now what it needs to do is be able to reprogram that so that it can move those volumes if you will of these like with your back to a place where it's readily accessible. And that's what this process of. Serum starving are growing cells in culture. Was it was a process to reset those bad genetic information. And that is as Dr. Parkman said a critically important thing for us to understand because that has implications far beyond reproductive and Genetic Technologies It has implications in terms of if we could turn off a figure how to turn off a bad gene in a tumor cell for example that would be very important obviously might provide therapy. So it's an area of research that I think Dolly is a contributor to but is not the only avenue at this point. I mean that process that was used in both in Hawaii and in Scotland turns up everything 0 and or gets it ready to be for everything to be turned back on it. So far there's no specificity involved in it or

no ability to differentiate which ones you want which genes you want on and which do you want off. It's just a generalized reprogramming that resets everything sort of back to the embryonic state. OK let's jump ahead a little bit because one of the other things that the researchers in Scotland have been able to do is create a lamb clone from a fetal cell not from adult cell but to create a limb from the fetal cell that contains in every cell of the animal. A little bit of human genetic material. Who So what are they how do they do that and what are the implications of that is that it seems that's what they want to do. That's the reason they do their research but what sort of implications might that have medical implications for humans whether it has a lot of implications. Let's start with with Dolly just because it's a good example. One of the things they were interested in doing was using Dolly as a factory to make a hormone or a drug and it would be very easy if you could just make that hormone so that Dolly would secreted into the milk and you could harvest the milk and use the milk either to just drink the milk and get the hormone or

if you had to purify the hormone away from the other components in the milk. The way they did that was to genetically engineer or the way they would do that would be to genetically engineer the an adult cell in culture and that's a kind of thing that goes on there's probably 20 labs at Northwestern 20 labs you've seen in 20 labs UIC in Chicago that are doing this on a routine basis and adding a new gene and asking how does that affect that cell. The problems that usually in a tissue culture situation are these super cells growing in a plastic dish. However if you could now to make that manipulation in the plastic dish and then pluck out a nucleus and turn that nucleus back into an animal you could imagine herds of cattle or herds of sheep that are now producing human growth hormone or producing human insulin. You know quantity that is far beyond any needs that somebody would have. And since many of the growth factors and hormones that that are medically important are in fact the product of that

genetic process. It opens the door for the ability to produce a vast assortment of pharmaceutical products. But it was the significance of Dolly was that she was quote from an adult animal in this experiment they did with human genetic material is a clone from the fetal cell So does that mean that the the ability to clone an adult is less significant in terms of application than perhaps was originally thought in terms of what you might want to do. You might not need to be running around claiming cloning adult animals or not is it still does it still have significant applications. Well I think it has m implications that we've already referred to if we can take an adult cell and make it as if it were a fetal cell if you will I think the fuel cell was possibly easier to deal with that had more plasticity. It had been committed possibly as much as an adult cell. I'm not sure that we would necessarily have to compare a futile within that build cell. I think

what we want to convey and communicate the importance of the process and its ability to generalize into other kinds of areas in general. We can talk about specific gene therapy for an individual who might be carrying a poor gene for example in the case of sickle cell disease which is a very common problem in the African-American population. But there are embryonic genes that have been shut off if they could be turned on and we're beginning to learn about that process. Then we can compensate for a mutant adult gene that now has produces the symptoms and signs of sickle cell. If we can take advantage of the existence of the genes that have been put on the shoes and that the back shelf bring them back into the library of life so that they and make them work then we have a cure for that. The person with the

use of external resources or or with symptomatic treatment that's so common. So do we divide things sort of into two groups I mean there's one set of things you might want to do that would involve adding or taking away genetic material from an existing gene and then another set of things that would involve manipulating an existing genome without adding or taking away from it. And these are two separate issues of a process used to separate sets of things to understand about how the cell works feel to do those things. Well yes I would think of it a little bit differently. So there are there are just a carry on. The example with sickle cell somebody has sickle cell and what you'd like to be able to do is cure them of that sickle cell disease. What you might want to be able to do is take out the cell take remove and manipulate that cell in culture take a nucleus and add it back somehow with the normal gene fix or with the embryonic gene now turned on somehow. That's a process that obviously if you're going to do it on an adult you

you don't have an embryonic cells. There's no way to go back and get an embryonic cell. If however what you want to do is what woman wanted to do which is to make an animal that produces a chemical. Then it's just technically easier to use an embryonic cell because they don't have the same reprogramming problem. So it's not as much a matter of. Whether it works better in one cell or another as much as it's a matter of what cells are available. And if you're talking about your therapeutic applications or modifying you know humans in some way that a stem cell may not be available or an embryonic cell for that particular individual may not be available. But you could take a stem cell resume oblique from the bone marrow and have the capability of going in a number of different directions and bring that out into the test tube manipulate it and then put it back into the same person who made the contribution of them. And in fact produce a

somatic cure we have to be careful of what we mean by cure because you're not going to basically change the germ line of that individual. That person still has the potential of passing on that mutant gene those cells giving rise to the germ line and have been separated very early in one's development so one can generate if you will a still magic cure in a number of ways either by an intrinsic change of the genetic information of the individual by a variety of ways. What sources of cell and who are by taking advantage of Dolly producing proteins or elements that are missing that contribute to the illness or disease that's associated to in a particular disease with sickle cell that sickle cell is a very interesting story because we know everything about it. We know where the mutation takes place in the molecular level. We know what cells are affected we know about a symptomatic effect we've known about it for years and yet this is a devastating disease the one of many.

Let's talk a little bit about germ line manipulation because if some of this this research would possibly lead in that direction and raises a lot of concerns about things that like people use the term designer babies and sure that means what. There are some applications that would be considerably less controversial of gene line manipulation maybe sickle cell is one of them but if this process of if if we were to get to a point of understanding this process of regulating genes and turning the mind off of resetting them or whatever you could theoretically at some future time go in and reset things that where the settings were diseased or clearly bad for you as opposed to blue white versus green it was something like that. That's right and there's there's been lots of discussion about possibilities that result from cloning. You know if. You need I mean there's been people fantasizing in that and I still would say it's it's in the fantasy stage but that if you needed an organ. If we really understood these processes you could take the nucleus out of one of your skin

cells or one of your easily come by a red cell that have nuclei but a white cell from your blood and manipulate it and somehow grow an organ from that. That's a use that I think most people might find less frightening. And that's one of the things and there are companies right now biotech companies who have that as one of one of their goals. So that's a good example of something I think where it's not necessarily germ line manipulation but it's using this cloning process. In a sense in a way to to further some of those kinds of things. It gets to move on to the next step though is it. And we've seen an example of this. People are now having children to provide bone morrow to offspring who've had leukemia for example. And while that's not genetic cloning experiment the hope is that the genetic make up of the sibling is close enough that there will be a good bone marrow donor. Well if you could actually clone the nucleus from the person

you know from from a person and then fix the gene and put it back. Then you know you might be able to have an offspring that was exactly identical except for that one disease process or if it was a case of disease like leukemia. You might be able to use their nucleus without manipulating it assuming their nuclear didn't carry a mutation that led to that disease. So that's a situation where it's always sort of a step away from things that have already happened. But it's one where it's actually much more controllable. So people have to make a judgment. But there is a reality we do have the technology to do germline. There are plenty of animal experiments that we could mimic if you will and humans using in-vitro fertilisation ject in DNA it cetera. That that possibility technically available now in the question is how how to deal with it it's not been raised in that light but you really called for a need for regulation.

The recent report of embryonic stem cell research done in a private setting because the government has not played a role which I think is a very critical role in regards to in-vitro fertilization and pre-implantation genetic and germ cell therapy so the government has been a very unfortunately been a negative force created a vacuum and allowed some aspects of the go unregulated uncharted if you will. And I think there has to be a reassessment on the part of the government about this particular issue. I don't mean we should make it clear that part of the reason why there's been this vacuum and there's been so much difficulty is that much of this research if not almost. Is it the ethical issues surrounding what we as a society feel about the use of this tissue

for research. Well there's actually a federal ban right now on the use of fetal tissue in federally funded research and that's while this research is occurring in the private sector. And I guess the question is. How do you come down on the issue of whether we should be pursuing knowledge or not. And without even going so far as to argue that people should be creating genetically modified or designed human beings I think that there is a strong value for being able to pursue knowledge and using fetal tissue is one way to do that. There's a lot of political cations that and I would say political baggage that comes along with that. But in a sense. The importance of doing that kind of research and the fact that the government has said it's not going to allow it. All it means is that it happens in the private sector and maybe as Dr. Berger was saying in a far less regulated or controlled fashion. So it's a double edged sword.

Let's take a quick break when we come back I want to talk about the stem cell research that we heard about over the weekend and also Dr. Perper like to hear from you on what bearing all of this might have on human reproduction in particular human infertility right now. So we'll take a break when we come back we'll also take some calls the number 3 1 2 8 3 2 3 1 2 4 3 1 2 8 3 2 3 1 2 4 Give us a call. This is Odyssey I'm Gretchen Helford And you're listening to WBEZ Chicago support for this WBEZ program is provided by discover brokerage real time quotes portfolio updates research. Just some of the reasons why Barron's named them best overall online broker the last three years in a row. More information at 1 800 discover or discover brokerage dot com. Today's programming on WBEZ is in honor of Erwin and Lois Rosenberg celebrating their Forty sixth wedding anniversary with love from dollar a day club member Jack Rosenberg. On the next FRESH AIR joined guest host Ken Tucker FRESH AIR's rock critic and critic at large for Entertainment Weekly. I'll talk with Neal Gabler about his new book Life the Movie

about how entertainment values have infected our culture like a virus. Join us for the next. Right to a clock right after TALK OF THE NATION on WBEZ Chicago you are listening to Chicago's Public Radio station WBEZ Chicago ninety one point five FM. I'm Gretchen helper to this is the Odyssey We're talking today about developments in science since the birth of Dolly last year and Cloning Science and related scientific developments will be taking your calls in a moment so feel free to give us a call at 3 1 2 8 3 2 3 1 2 4 8 3 2 3 1 2 4 We're talking with Dr. Rex Chisholm and Dr. Eugene Pergamon of Northwestern University. All right let's talk about the news of last week in the weekend which is that scientists have discovered how to isolate and culture in a laboratory. Embryonic stem cells. Is it terribly important discovery So let's talk about why it is

terribly important. First can you distinguish I assume that in an embryo early stage is not made up entirely of stem cells. That's correct. Actually the stem cells represent only a small population that embryo. And the reason it's so important is we're using it in learning an enormous amount right now in biomedical research through the use of. Mice that have been manipulated by either adding a gene or removing a gene having a gene is actually quite a bit easier than removing a gene and the only way that we can easily remove a gene is through a manipulation of a cell which you can then turn into an animal. And that's what yes along there are a special cell that exists in an embryo. It's very specialized and what's special about them is that they can become any kind of the cell they are totipotent as it said. And so the fact that you can then going to manipulate that cell add it back to an embryo and have the resulting animal be genetically

made up of DNA that was in that cell is incredibly important in terms of understanding how biological organisms work. And in terms of understand disease processes Well what let me let me ask for some clarification here. What are the rest of the cells in an embryo. Well there are cells so obviously we start off with an egg and the A becomes fertilized and the egg goes through a series of divisions and depending on the organism whether it's a frog or a mouse there is a stage at which you could take it's after the first cell division. There are now two cells. You can take and separate those cells and each of those will then go on to become an organism. That's how you get twins. So it's one of the Waiting to twins. Identical twins come by come by that route. The problem is that by the time you've divided to either four cells or eight cells or 16 cells you now can't pluck away any one of those cells and be sure that it would go on to complete to produce a complete animal. An embryonic

stem cell will. And so that's what's special about a stem cell is it's a cell that somewhere in that mass that that prison will lead to for example the germ one that has that capability. So if you were to take a stem cell and do whatever manipulation you would want to do and inject it back into an embryo and then the animal that the results from that contains the DNA of that stem cell does that mean that the stem cell is the parent of all the other cells in that animal. Well yes and no I mean technically what happens is you injected into an embryo. Right and there's some cells from the embryo and then there's the stem cells. So the resulting animal that comes from that embryo is actually it's called a kind marrow. It has actually the parents that led to that embryo. So mom and dad and then the genetic information that came from the stem cells. So it has three parents. You know in a sense. So the idea is that if you take that kind Merican animal

and now breed that kind Merak animal if the gene if the if the stem cells contributed to the gametes the germ line then you'll be able to transmit it on to subsequent generations. If it just contributed to somatic tissue to the brain or the eye or the arm then you wouldn't be able to pass it on. So in that case the offspring would be from the original embryo. In that case it contribute to the germ line the offspring would be from the ESL itself and I assume the trick then would be to figure out a way to tell the stem cell what to do once you put it back in not just you know change whatever Gene you want but then tell it what kind of cell it needed to become. Well it will become also. That's the beauty of it and that is the it. In the case where the animal is in the germ line the next generation benefits from that manipulation now because every cell in that next generation animal has that genetic manipulation in it. Now if you raise one of these interesting issues now the ESL results from last week so it's very exciting that people now may have

identified the cells that have this capability for humans. They have the the look of an ESL. They have the gene expression that suggests it's in the cell. But the proof of being an ESL is whether it will make an animal or not. So here's an example of an interesting paradox because we now have these cells we think are likely to be human embryonic stem cells but the only way to really do the test would be to take that embryonic stem cell add it back to another embryo implanted into a mother and then look at the next gen at the at the animal that came out of that and then breed the animal that came out of that to see if it passes it on to the next generation. That's the proof that something's in USL question is is that an experiment we can we want to do. We could do it. Is that an experiment we want to do. All right. Well before we go to the founders one other issue that we need to get to and that is what what the implications are of this collection of research and discoveries.

What bearing it might have on human reproduction not human cloning but human reproduction in fertility treatment. Now what might it do to our understanding of ways to deal with infertility Dr. Parkman. What what have we learned that might be helpful. A major room cause of the pregnancy failure is mal distribution of the chromosome. And the focus has always been on the chromosomes themselves but again that's part of the information being garnered from all of this kind of research. The focus now has shifted to an organ L in the cell called the Central. And it is peers at least the hypothesis and the reasoning is that there as as the century old itself ages it fails to produce the normal apparatus with the appropriate movement and distribution of chromosomes. The consequence of that is to have chromosomes being lost or in appropriately added

clinical condition called Down's Syndrome is a consequence of an extra chromosome number 21. So again our understanding of the biochemistry in the middle molecular pathology associated with chromosomal known disjunction of the chromosomes to separate properly has obvious very direct clinical consequences. So it may be in agreement the present time but eventually with this kind of knowledge we may be able to minimize or eliminate this tremendous fear that is associated with older women becoming pregnant. And that is that a much higher incidence or risk of a conception with a chromosome abnormality. So at this point there are manipulations taking plays in the test tube moving nuclei from older women into fresh cytoplasm the C of the mitochondria another organelle having to do with energy is been affected by

aging. And who are the use of century old was from different sources to enhance the appropriate and proper separation of chromosomes. Again not necessarily directly related to cloning but cloning has to be viewed in large part as a technique. And that's the technique the application of these techniques that will enhance our or our health. So in terms of how this might one day down the road lead to a therapy would it be something like egg donation but without the egg nucleus where you get a donation of a egg from a younger woman and then will that of course is possible now I mean there are but I mean without without the nucleus of the egg just using the cytoplasm of that of the younger and the nucleus of the egg from the other woman there are IVF programs that deliberately are doing that right now. They're taking out about 10 percent of the cytoplasm of an older oversight and replacing it with cytoplasm from a younger person.

And the question is can we extend that by taking the whole nucleus from an older person and putting it into a fresh cytoplasm that includes the Centry all the apparatus that would now be a younger apparatus if you will and those experiments are are in progress at the present time as well. So that's one implication but a very important one you know because this contributes in large part to why pregnancy fails. How much can you give us a sense of in terms of we hear the figure that approximately 10 percent of American couples are infertile. What percent of people with this particular technique or this particular solution be affecting. A Probably almost all of them. And particularly I think both and if you take 100 women who practice unprotected sex and want to get pregnant only 25 of them get pregnant 75 percent of them the pregnancies are lost and IVF programs have really shown that in an artificial setting the same incidence takes place. And when you look at

these embryos that fail the vast majority of them are due to chromosomal maldistribution. So it is a gem. It's true for younger women I want to make that point as well as older women undergoing pregnancy. All right let's turn to the phones are numbers 3 1 2 8 3 2 3 1 2 4 8 3 2 3 1 2 4 if you want to ask a question or make a comment please feel free to do so. Let's talk to Sally good morning Sally on WBEZ. Hi my question is due to cancer therapy my 13 year old thought. Is that evil. That's going on where we're losing either Sally and any comment on that problem. I have a little trouble hearing tell you that as a result of cancer therapy infertility as a result of the cancer thing. Well obviously to use the examples that we've been discussing

Dolly would be simply an example where we could take an adult cell from this young man whose treatment unfortunately has made him sterile. Taking that cell from potentially any part of his body that has a nucleus and treating it in such a way similar to Dolly by shutting down all his and putting them into G-0 is Dr. Joseph was describing and put it into a cytoplasm that would have now allow him to initiate cell division and literally create a twin of this this is what cloning basically is all about. So that's certainly one particular source. It might be possible on the A-list dramatic way is to be able to biopsy the. Parental cells that normally would give rise to sperm and see if we could possibly capture those and treat them in an appropriate

way that we might make them mature from a parental cell with equal rights for men to go needle itself into a functional sperm cell. Again that would depend on the nature of the treatment and what cells are available in the testes following the treatment of for his disease. It's probably worth making the point though that if you did the cloning that the child would not be a normal child in that it wouldn't have both a mother and father would have only a father. The beauty of the approach that Dr. Drew was just talking about that is being able to actually stimulate a cell earlier in the sperm production pathway to make sperm is that that would actually perhaps even allow him to have a child that has a mother as well but again would we be talking about a process that might involve further understanding of regulating cell activity within the cell so telling us how to do something it doesn't seem inclined to do.

Absolutely. Or stimulating it to go right along the pathway it might normally go along but just hasn't. All right Sally thanks very much for your call. 3 1 2 8 3 2 3 1 2 4 1 is the number let's talk to build the morning value on WBEZ. I just want to comment about a lot of the resistance to it. Scientists are getting these days especially with the fetal research and think part of it a little bit of their own doing. I think most people 40 or older remember what a lot a lot of stuff that happened back. 30 40 years ago I know when I when I was born my mother was given a drug which turned out to be really bad especially for the daughters when I am not a girl. So to me I guess it didn't affect me much but little University of Chicago gave my mother drugs which she said she wanted absolutely no drugs of any kind not even painkillers. He did it anyway. So the scientific community has that whole they got a big themselves out of here in terms of trust the American people. At the same time I think a lot of scientists have really resisted popularizing science for.

Remember when Carl Sagan's program came out all my father's friends and people at the university you know they were just trying to get publicity he's just a big egomaniac they were really well that it wasn't really widely. You know he was really widely criticized for for doing this you know what with you doing this where you have both I have no butt. If I am I'm. Not trying to popularize that but you know you're dealing with 280 million people not a small group of the scientific community if you want support from now right now to resist coming from the right wing But you know. What I know that all will come from that direction had always if you want people understand the stuff and support it. You've got to make them understand. I mean a slew of genetic research in the long run is going to be tremendous things for the human race and. Not all bad but you won't get there if you don't make it known to most people what's what. What's going on. I think the real deal is the right call you. Would you agree with that about Heller's making a very important point and I agree with it wholeheartedly I think one of the

things that we need to do a better job of as a scientific community is to communicate effectively with the public. You know there's one of the beauties of science and of biology in particular is that it's simple. Everybody laughs when I say that. But it's simple it's because of the elegance of biology the complicated part is just when we don't understand it but once we finally understand how things work it's actually fairly simple and we need to do a much better job in the scientific community of communicating that to the public. I think the example of Carl Sagan is is a good one there are even people that claim that he's been denied he was denied membership in for example the sciences because of people thinking he shouldn't have done that and it's unfortunate because I think he was a great popularizer and I think there's a whole. Group of people who are signed it's signed It's now because of popularizers like George dam of in the past who was a great popularizer of science and I think the scientific community has a very important role to play in that. I'd like to make one other point and that is I would

like to however make a distinction between the scientific community in the medical community. And I think each of us has our own responsibilities. But the scientific community's responsibility I think have have have we learned a lot. And for example the main societies that are involved with the kind of science that. Cloning requires have themselves agreed on a moratorium of doing human germline kinds of cloning and said that that should not happen for or Currently it's a period of five years while we discuss in the public some of these issues. Dr. Berger What do you think about that. Well first of all. Obviously the not so there hasn't been enough in the area of education but certainly the attempt has been there there is a curriculum in the lower schools in the high schools that's been around for a number of years. The genetics community he holds in the high school programs here at Northwestern are dean of the Graduate School

Rick Morimoto has a students come in for four weekends and learned some very basic kinds of things in molecular biology. So I think there should be more but look at what the government is talking about shutting down the Department of Education. And the criticism here is that they haven't the government hasn't played a role in sufficiently in terms of bringing the science community together with the public to have these kinds of discussions. And that's why public radio can put a plug in there's so very I'm very heartened. When that kind of thing but it isn't enough and it's not necessarily been very successful because you get these bites on television or on radio you don't have the opportunity for full discussion and you don't get full participation either by the scientific community or the public so there is a real need for this. But I don't think

the idea of what the gentleman was talking about in terms of his mother being exposed. You can't make a blanket criticism of all of science or all of medicine because of these problems and and and being a first class nation in science means that sometimes we have to take risk you want to minimize those risks. And if the government and the people aren't involved actively then something like what happened with the US is going to take place. It seems like what you're talking about what are you suggesting is is not so much that that you likely blame science but rather that you know this. This perhaps antiquated notion of just letting the scientists do what they do. Well the public doesn't know what's going on they've sort of lost trust in that relationship because of things that have gone wrong and I don't think that I don't think they have lost trust I think if you there's there's a survey that's done every year by John Miller who's actually a member of our department and he has done the studies of science

of science in science literacy and there is more support I think among the populace right now for the progress in biomedical research because it's the most amazingly exciting time in biomedical research right now and so I think that the public is doing its share. I think it's doing its job. It's an AI has gotten its largest increase in history just this year in the budget that was just approved. So those are all signs of support and I think the scientific community has a real strong responsibility to go back and educate the public. All right Bill thanks very much for your call and see if we can at least get one more call in. Let's talk to Morning Joe you're on WBEZ down. Hi ari I heard quite a bit of the debate could it matter that our current primary. Wired phone if a call or a woman aren't recording our code or trip where we actually air it over a car. Indicated why are you pregnant with a mind of your own.

Interesting question Dr. Berman. Well of course the hard question here. Again it's a question of the cup being half empty half full. So we do have lots of information about why certain women have difficulty conceiving some of them carried genetic changes that while they themselves are healthy and normal puts them at reproductive risk when they conceive there is much about the physiology of reproduction we still don't know him and although someone can undergo a battery if you will of valuations and tests we may many times not end up with a reason why someone cannot conceive there are multiple causes. But I guess I would re-emphasize that in them a large percentage of cases there is this production of genetically abnormal. Zygotes embryos etc. that are

conceived that much of the science we've been talking about this morning will address in the short in the long run and gradually that this will be a problem that will be resolved but there are so many different reasons why women can conceive that we have to be focused on defining specific problems. All right John thanks very much for your question we're just we're short on time but I'd like to ask both of you how much confidence do you have that in terms of developing research programs and progressing with these techniques that we've been talking about today that that our government or our society in general is competent to prevent the things that we really don't want. I mean if we really let's say we really fundamentally don't want people to be cloned ever are we are we competent up to do that. Or one other concern that's been raised is that if you want. America is producing weird mixes of animal different animal species or humans and animals.

Are you confident that we can prevent those things that in fact as a society we don't want to have happen. I think the answer that's absolutely clear. We're not I mean we can't even prevent people from speeding down Michigan Avenue. I mean so I think what you what you what you do have going for you here is that these things are not easy to do and they take substantial resources. And so in order to be able to do that you've got to have somebody that has the expertise the training and the resources. And if you really don't want something to have happen along those lines you can try to put a roadblock in those resources being available which is why for example there's a ban on field research in this country. Not that that's in my opinion a necessarily good thing but. That's what you can do but the bottom line is you can legislate all you want and it hasn't stopped people from doing things you don't want to do and I think we need to be aware that that's a possibility. Dr. Bergman What do you think would you agree with that.

I basically I do because I think inherent in any effort where you devise a strategy or an approach there are either people or things that can manipulate that approach or strategy get around if you will. And again it goes back to this issue of that there is some need for regulation of those words. You know I got to cut you off I'm sorry. NET's All right we're running short on time my fault. Dr. Eugene parliment is head of the section of reproduction reproductive genetics at Northwestern and Dr. extremism is professor of Cell and Molecular Biology at Northwestern. Thank you both very much for coming in today. Thanks also to Joshua Andrews for producing and directing to readers and Steve vine for engineering Zazi and Gretchen health which And you're listening to WBEZ Chicago. You know it's

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