Two and a half years ago, President Bush restricted federal funding for research that uses embryonic stem cells. So one of America's top scientists in the field, Roger Pederson, got the hell out of Dodge. He resigned from UC San Francisco and started the Cambridge Centre for Stem Cell Biology and Medicine at the University of Cambridge, in England. It was a controversial move in a controversial field; Pederson was the most senior scientist to relocate, responding to British promises of a welcoming environment, both in terms of funding and ethics rules. Now Pederson has the resources to continue his work - and to ask what our protean nature tells us about being human.
WIRED: How are things different in the UK?
PEDERSON: They haven't made such a political football out of stem cells. Animal research is more opposed than embryo research, and they're against genetically modified food. There were a couple of big policy debates following the birth of Louise Brown [the first IVF baby] that addressed a lot of these issues. I don't know what the opposition in the US means. It intrigues me that people who are opposed to embryo research by and large have no idea what an embryo is.
OK, but are you homesick?
I have a soft spot in my heart for America. But the UK is much better for this research. Here, there is government funding, and the funding goes where the science goes.
Are you actually cloning human embryos to derive stem cells?
No, no one in the UK has done that yet. You have to get a license. If there was a need, we would apply for one.
Supposedly, in China it's easier to get human eggs. Will they take the research lead?
The UK has more working capital, so I don't know. The silicon revolution happened in California; the stem cell revolution could happen in Asia. Anyway, it's futile to do everything in one country. That's why I'm involved in a UK-led international standardization effort, the Human Stem Cell Project. The International Society for Stem Cell Research in the US is also taking a lead.
What are you working on right now?
At the center, we work on all areas of potential specialization of stem cells, including neuronal, pancreatic beta cells, blood, and, more recently, heart cell differentiation. When most cells specialize [replicate as a specific cell type], they become monolithic. They don't reverse themselves. The cell that can go back is the stem cell. Differentiation is the expression of a set of genes that connotes a particular cell type. But we don't know why that set of genes got expressed or what maintains their expression. We don't understand the condition of the chromosomes that precedes and maintains that specialized state.
These cells seem pretty miraculous.
Most of our tissues that are in contact with the environment turn over rapidly. Your legacy isn't just your body but also large piles of cells produced because of this replacement phenomenon. It's what I call the tectonic human, like the tectonic Earth - constantly renewed from deep sources and melted back into magma again. Our body is always changing, we just don't see it.
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