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this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
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Futurology
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Let me guess, the stem cells are harvested from pigs?
Presumably they culture more, but obviously the first cells would have had to. Some of these companies have been very particular about sourcing their starting cells non-lethally from sanctuary animals or whatever, because why not.
If you only have to do it once (or a few times) and can use it repeatedly ad infinitum, you can be just about as discerning as you want.
Exactly.
Generally stem cell cultures these days are sourced once then replicated forever.
That’s pretty incredible, with no noticeable degradation between replications? I know very little about stem cell cultures.
There’d have to be some degradation over time. Unless they’re repairing the DNA using computerized backups or something.
The stem cells themselves are self-repairing and self replicating. Quoting Wikipedia:
Currently all embryonic stem cell research and therapies in the US are conducted using only 486 cultures.
Likely, but stem cell harvesting is not as horrible for pigs and doesn't require thousands of them either. It's certainly a massive improvement.
That's kinda the point‽