French scientists, writing in the February 8, 2003 issue of The Lancet, claim success in treating a heart attack victim with muscle stem-cells transplanted from his thigh to his heart. Though the seventy-two-year-old patient died eighteen months later, examination of his heart showed that the grafted stem cells had taken root and were differentiating into myotubes and contractile tissue.
Meanwhile, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization has called for efforts to increase the genetic diversity of bananas, noting that the plant could be wiped out by disease with relative ease due to homogeneity in banana crops. They point to biotech as one possible solution. (See http://www.foodnavigator.com/news/news.asp?id=6921.)
And when we learn to turn adult muscle cells into bananas, we'll know we're really getting good at this sort of thing.
