Conductivity Measurements

Published in 2010, Rebecca Skloot’s book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, offers a three-fold story.  It is the story of the development of the first immortal human cell line (called HeLa) and the scientific advances facilitated thereby. It is also the story of the African American woman from whom the cell line came: Henrietta Lacks was the great-great granddaughter of slaves, who grew up in extreme poverty in Virginia in the 1920s and who died of an aggressive cervical cancer in 1951 in the ward for “colored people” at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Finally, it is the story of her family members, who had no idea about the existence, importance and the financial gains made from HeLa cells until Skloot began her research.   This book sparked more than just an HBO film by the same name starring Oprah Winfrey, it also sparked an attempt at broad policy change in the U.S. regarding consent procedures for human tissue research. Currently, the regulations on research with human subjects issued by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate informed consent for the use of biospecimens in research when those specimens are taken specifically for the purpose of research. However, no informed consent for research use is required for tissue samples taken in the course of clinical practice. In 2015, HHS proposed a rule change to give patients much greater control over the use of their biospecimens in research. Yet this effort failed due to backlash from the scientific community.   In this paper, I shall address some of the major arguments against such regulatory changes. For instance, Chadwick & Berg stress a duty to participate in research for the benefit of others; Knoppers & Chadwick further criticize the emphasis on individualism and autonomy over the value of solidarity in contemporary research ethics and policy. My aim is to counter these arguments and to support the proposed regulatory changes in the U.S. regarding tissue research. I hope to highlight important contemporary lessons we have yet to fully appreciate from the case of Henrietta Lacks.

Granted, how a natural entity can have interiority, i.e., subjectivity, is a hard problem, but if the question of integration and unification is not identical to the “Hard Problem of Consciousness” (Chalmers 1995) it is also inseparable from it and surely a presupposition of the very possibility of interiority. Nor would even an understanding of how subjectivity could be resident to a single cell tell us how consciousness could become an integrated unity across many cells. If we assume consciousness is a physically based phenomenon, and that it draws upon the activity of various parts of the brain, let alone constituent cells, then we must face our deficits in understanding how the experience of a unified consciousness is realized at the level of an integration of some cells but not others albeit in the absence of evident, non-arbitrary, physical boundaries.

When T-Cells are activated they release cytokines (yes, that cytokine), which trigger additional T-Cells to be made, which then release even more cytokines. One type of T-cells that are created are called cytotoxic T-cells. Cytotoxic T-cells are the cells that are able to roam the body and mercy kill infected cells who are chemically calling out to be killed and ideally to stop the increased production of viruses like COVID-19.

P.putida Competent Cells

P. aeruginosa cells were made competent utilizing a microcentrifuge-based procedure.

DCs are key initiators both of innate immune responses via cytokine production and of adaptive immune responses via presentation of antigen to T lymphocytes.

electroporation buffer (680 mM sucrose, 7 mM K2HPO4, pH 7)

the maintenance of the pluripotent state of animal stem cells requires hypoxic conditions, whereas higher oxygen tension promotes cell differentiation

inmates

Global protein acetylation

Passaged rBMSCs exhibited significantly greater proliferation rates at 1% O2 and 5% O2 than those at 18% O2 and the cells exposed to 1% O2 showed the highest proliferative potential, which was evidenced by the growth curves, colony-forming efficiencies, and CCK-8 absorbance values.

discovery that could potentially revolutionize how and where we harvest, preserve, and use stem cells

Eventually cells stuck together to form creatures with many cells. Plants and animals came out of the sea onto land and became ever more complex and aware