coreeanu cu nastere vinrgina

Shamed clone fraud scientist created world’s first ‘virgin birth’ by accident
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Mark Henderson, Science Editor

A stem-cell scientist branded a cheat for faking research has been commended for achieving a breakthrough discovery, albeit by accident.

The latest twist in the extraordinary story of Woo Suk Hwang, the disgraced South Korean, came yesterday as American scientists published analysis that concluded he should be credited with a world first. However, they said that his failure to recognise his own breakthrough – using a technique that takes its name from the virgin birth – cast further doubt on his abilities and integrity.

According to a US study published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, a line of human embryonic stem cells created by Professor Hwang, which he claimed fraudulently to have cloned, were in fact the first to have been made by a different process that has significant medical potential. Analysis of the cells has shown that they were derived by parthenogenesis, a method of reproduction by which unfertilised eggs start to divide to form embryos, as if they had been fertilised by sperm.

Though Professor Hwang’s team appears to have done this by accident, the achievement is still important because parthenogenesis is itself promising as a source of stem cells for research and therapy.
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Parthenogenesis, which takes its name from the Greek words for “virgin birth”, is a method of reproduction used by all fungi, most plants and many animals, including lizards, bees, corals and some birds and fish. Mammals cannot produce offspring in this way and it is extremely difficult to induce parthenogenesis in the laboratory.

A handful of human embryos have been made by parthenogenesis before, including by a team led by Paul de Sousa, at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, but these have always died before reaching the stage at which stem cells could be extracted.