Stem cells in Catania
Discussion about stem cells, pseudo-science, bioinformatics and robotics.
Catania, 14th March 2014,
The conference held on 14th March 2014 spoke about new technologies in the biomedical area. It was dealt with
during the morning session. The subjects were dealt by important authorities, experts on the subject, such as Berciavalle and Elena Cattaneo, in live streaming. They spoke about stem cells, bioinformatics, robotics and how they
could help doctors in diagnosis or make paraplegic people walk.
The conference started with an interesting discussion about pseudo-science and how to avoid false news, which is
simple to unmask, in fact the pseudo-scientists often don't talk about the argument directly, but they divert their
speeches on plots or on upcoming catastrophes.
Berciavalle talked about stem cells, their differentiation, and the history of how they were discovered. He spoke
about how the first research was done on embryonic cells with a pluripotential status. Recently, a Japanese researcher
called Yamanaka, determined that adults cells could return to a pluripotential state and then could evolve in every
type of cells, but there are some problems about their stability, in fact they could lose the control and transform in
carcinogenic cells.
Furthermore a jurist talked about laws on the use of stem cells and a researcher discussed about the use of computer
in making drugs more efficient.
In the afternoon there were many other different activities regarding the subject, such as lessons about the fertilization of sea urchins or forensis genetics.
Marco Rudilosso
IV A Liceo Scientifico
PAGINA
17