Article #4

The Article: http://www.nichd.nih.gov/news/releases/102809-germ-cell.cfm

Summary: "National Institutes of Health have discovered how to transform human embryonic stem cells into germ cells, the embryonic cells that ultimately give rise to sperm and eggs. The advance will allow researchers to observe human germ cells—previously inaccessible—in laboratory dishes. Laboratory observation of human germ cells has the potential to yield important clues to the origins of unexplained infertility and to the genesis of many birth defects and chromosomal disorders. Researchers have long sought to understand the process by which cells in the early human embryo mature into germ cells."

The Experiment: "The study was conducted by Kehkooi Kee, Vanessa T. Angeles, Martha Flores, Ha Nam Nguyen and Renee A. Reijo Pera, all of Stanford University School of Medicine. The researchers began with human embryonic stem cells, to which they added a gene that makes a protein which flashes green when a gene found only in germ cells is turned on. After the embryonic stem cells grew and changed for two weeks, the researchers isolated the cells that flashed green and then confirmed that the green fluorescing cells behaved like germ cells. Once convinced that their cells were in fact germ cells, the researchers turned on and off several candidate genes to see if those genes played a role in the development of stem cells into immature germ cells."

Relevance: I find this article interesting because human germ cells contribute a lot to medical science as a whole. Like it was quoted from the article, germ cells could explain some things that involve unexplained infertility, birth defects and chromosomal disorders. I personally think this is a good article because usually when people think about germs, they think about something bad. But it's a weird thought when you think about germs causing birth defects and things like that. I didn't know it was germs that caused some of those, I thought it was just something grown the wrong way or some sort of DNA chromosome was sending the wrong message.