How to Harvest & Culture Stem Cells

Since there isn’t an endless supply of embryonic stem cells, scientists of today have designed a way to harvest these priceless cells. This process is also known as cell culture. According to the National Institute of Health (2008), stem cell culturing is done inside scientific laboratories. This scientific process is quite simple. Stem cells are first put into dishes where they start to multiply (National Institute of Health, 2008). According to the National Institute of Health, (2008), a culture is a multiplying group of cells within each separate dish. When a dish has many, many cells, scientists will put separate stem cells into separate dishes (National Institute of Health, 2008), this is called sub-culturing.

To prevent the stem cell cultures from differentiating by themselves, scientists turn the stem cells into specific cells such as muscle, nerve, or heart cells (National Institute of Health, 2008). To do this, according to the National Institute of Health (2008), scientists simply alter the dish surface of the culture or change the chemicals within the dish. Another way is by inserting various types of genes into the blank stem cells to change them (National Institute of Health, 2008). According to some (National Institute of Health, 2008), if it is possible for scientists direct the cell differentiation, then it is very possible that stem cells could be the next, and possibly the greatest breakthrough in the medical world.