( e before his announcement of the policy...)Embryonic stem cells accrue genetic changes

Most of the "late" batches of stem cells -- those grown in the lab a year to three years longer than their early counterparts -- displayed gross changes in the number of copies of chromosomes or parts of chromosomes, in the marks that control whether a gene is used by the cell, or in the sequence of DNA found in the cell's mitochondria.

"The majority of the lines we tested had genetic changes over time," says Chakravarti. "Whenever you have something in a culture dish, it can change, and it will be important to identify, keep track of and understand these changes."

At this point, the precise effects of these changes on the cells aren't known, but some of the changes resemble those seen in cancerous cells. At any rate, the changes presumably became entrenched in a particular cell line because they conferred some advantage as the cells were grown in laboratory dishes. Whether the changes affect the stem cells' abilities to become other cell types is also unknown.

Although research with human embryonic stem cells is still in the lab -- not the clinic -- focusing on what the cells can do and how they are controlled, the hope is that in the future these cells might help replace or repair tissues lost to disease or injury. Because embryonic stem cells can become any type of cell found in the body, in theory they could replace certain pancreas cells in people with type I diabetes, or regenerate brain cells lost in a person with Parkinson's disease, for example.

The analyses of the embryonic stem cell lines and the computer comparisons of the mounds of resulting data required the efforts of scientists at four academic centers, two federal laboratories and three companies. Critical to the team's success was prescient support of cutting-edge
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Source:Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions