Stem cells : what, why, whereabouts and when : part 2

Abstract

A lot of what is known about stem cell plasticity comes from animal studies and also clinical studies of sex-mismatched organ transplants where different tissues in the recipient (usually of a bone marrow transplant) were assessed for cells containing sex-mismatched cells in other tissues. Bone marrow stem cells, probably the most well studied stem cells, have been shown in various studies to give rise to numerous other different types of cells, including muscle cells, cardiac muscle cells, liver cells, lung cells, bone cells, cartilage cells, fat cells and even neuronal cells. These are derived from either the haematopoietic stem cell or the mesenchymal stem cell found in bone marrow.