What are stem cells?🧬 #stemcell #stemregen

Can we just take a moment from a high level and define stem cells for everybody that's listening today?

Everything in your body are called somatic cells, meaning they are cells that are very specialized. They will do one only thing. They will never transform, will never multiply. If you lose your sight, you lose cells in your— let's say you stop hearing. If you tell somebody, scream louder in my eye, it's not going to work. The cells in your retina responds to light. Cells in your ear responds to sound vibration. Everything in your body does one thing. It never changes. At the other end of the You have stem cells. They are nothing. They are a blank cell with the potential of becoming any one of those somatic cells in your body. So they were traditionally known to only be blood precursors. That is the big discovery that gave rise to what today we call stem cell research. 20-some years ago, we discovered these stem cells that have been known for decades to be precursors to red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets— well, they can also become heart, liver, lung cells, pancreatic cells, brain