Some Stem Cells from Females Work Better
The recent revelation that female muscle cells work better than male muscle cells came when researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center were injecting muscle stem cells into mice with a disease similar to muscular dystrophy to see if the cells would regenerate damaged skeletal muscle. They did. Then the scientists noticed something they didn’t expect: the stem cells taken from healthy female mice produced far better results than stem cells taken from male mice.
These are not embryonic stem cells that can grow into any cell in the body; these are adult stem cells that are limited in their ability to grow into just muscle cells.
“Regardless of the sex of the host, the implantation of female stem cells led to significantly better skeletal muscle regeneration,” the study’s senior author, the University of Pittsburgh’s Johnny Huard, told MSNBC.
This is yet another blow to us men, coming on top of the news that the Y gene is shrinking and that men continue to die younger than women. Now it appears that our usefulness for providing certain stem cells may also be in doubt. It makes me wonder what will come next in this molecular biobattle of the sexes.
The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center study was published in the April 9 issue of the Journal of Cell Biology.
Keep Reading
Most Popular
The inside story of how ChatGPT was built from the people who made it
Exclusive conversations that take us behind the scenes of a cultural phenomenon.
How Rust went from a side project to the world’s most-loved programming language
For decades, coders wrote critical systems in C and C++. Now they turn to Rust.
Design thinking was supposed to fix the world. Where did it go wrong?
An approach that promised to democratize design may have done the opposite.
Sam Altman invested $180 million into a company trying to delay death
Can anti-aging breakthroughs add 10 healthy years to the human life span? The CEO of OpenAI is paying to find out.
Stay connected
Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review
Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.