3 ms·

Stem cells don’t remember anything, especially not injuries. No way. That’s so ridiculous, and whatever Alex actually found is probably meaningless. Single cel

Stem cells don’t remember anything, especially not injuries. No way. That’s so ridiculous, and whatever Alex actually found is probably meaningless. Single cell sequencing can statistically correlate with anything. It practically can explain anything. It’s a veritable paper factory system, not a path towards credible medical therapies (the only thing that people really care about). Hacker News, Y Combinator possibly specifically, and VC generally is being overrun with a dodgy zeitgeist: the dot com bulge of nutritional-supplement-quality “science” masquerading as biotech. I mean seriously. These posts are always overrun with personal andecdotes of hack “I know enough” biology. Can’t we see the red flags?

Nasrudith 8y ago
Yeah that is starting to look like woo but not from the headline. I mean I could see say remaining scar tissues causing problems even if stem cells caused regrowth at the sight for example. That is actually plausible given mice studies seem to show senescent cells cause aging related deformations. The use of generic "inflammation" as an evil is a major red flag.
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pseudosudoer 8y ago
Could you go into more detail as to why it's doubtful that their findings point to stem cell memory? I'm genuinely curious as stem cell jargon is foreign to me.
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stanfordkid 8y ago
Interesting, care to elaborate? I don't think we understand biology well enough, yet, to be so dismissive based on purely structural grounds. We don't even understand the role of mRNA's fully or how they might be used as a memory mechanism... it seems perfectly plausible that injuries result in transcription of some sort of mRNA that yields this sort of behavior. You seem excessively dismissive without giving any real specific evidence as to why.
rossdavidh 8y ago
I would agree with "that's a pretty bold conclusion, I would need to see independent confirmation", but not with "we know enough about stem cells to say this is impossible".

Nasrudith 8y ago

Yeah that is starting to look like woo but not from the headline. I mean I could see say remaining scar tissues causing problems even if stem cells caused regrowth at the sight for example. That is actually plausible given mice studies seem to show senescent cells cause aging related deformations. The use of generic "inflammation" as an evil is a major red flag.

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pseudosudoer 8y ago

Could you go into more detail as to why it's doubtful that their findings point to stem cell memory? I'm genuinely curious as stem cell jargon is foreign to me.

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stanfordkid 8y ago

Interesting, care to elaborate? I don't think we understand biology well enough, yet, to be so dismissive based on purely structural grounds. We don't even understand the role of mRNA's fully or how they might be used as a memory mechanism... it seems perfectly plausible that injuries result in transcription of some sort of mRNA that yields this sort of behavior. You seem excessively dismissive without giving any real specific evidence as to why.

rossdavidh 8y ago

I would agree with "that's a pretty bold conclusion, I would need to see independent confirmation", but not with "we know enough about stem cells to say this is impossible".