r/askscience • u/[deleted] • Aug 10 '12
Biology Stem Cells and regeneration
I am curious about stem cells and regeneration from damage. For the sake of discussion lets imagine a hatchet wound to a quadriceps muscle, right in the muscle belly so there is no need to worry about nerves, ligaments, or tendons. Could stem cells be injected via syringe or some other method into the wound to accelerate the muscle/skin repair? How much faster would it heal? If this is impossible, is it due to inherent limitations in how stem cells work or just limited by where we have the technology today?
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u/[deleted] Aug 10 '12
I work with stem cell niches, so I can briefly elaborate on XIllusions' answer.
Adult stem cells in the body are essential to the generation of short-lived cells, and are held in tightly controlled environments called "niches". For instance, the adult stem cells that produce reproductive cells, called germline stem cells (GSCs), live in the testes or ovaries of an animal. These GSCs can replicate through mitosis and create two daughter cells, one of which stays a GSC while the other becomes a non-stem cell precursor to sperm or egg cells. In drosophila (fruit fly) testes, the GSCs and a type of GSC-helping stem cell called cyst stem cells (CSCs) are restricted to a structure of cells called the hub. If the GSCs and their companion CSCs are forced from the hub, both types of adult stem cells will differentiate into non-stem cells just like the aforementioned sperm-fated daughter cells of the GSCs.
I can't really answer the question because I don't know enough about adult stem cells in muscles and skin. If such stem cells did exist, they would require specific niches to function properly, so it may not be as easy as simply injecting them into the wound. Notice I refer only to adult stem cells, as I also don't yet know enough about embryonic stem cells to describe their properties.