• Question: Do all organs, such as the heart, contain stem cells ?

    Asked by paperclipmadness to Anzy, Aoife, Dave, Matt, Tomasz on 15 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: David Christensen

      David Christensen answered on 15 Nov 2013:

      I think there is some disagreement amongst scientists about this question, but I think there are stem cells in most organs, if not all and yes there are stem cells in the heart. There are also certainly stem cells in the brain, intestines, muscles, bones and fat.

      One organ where there has been some controversy recently is in the ovaries in women. People had thought that women had a set number of eggs for their life and could not make more, but a scientist in America last year said that he had found stem cells for making more eggs. I think there are quite a lot of scientists who don’t really believe him. I don’t know what to think because I’m not an expert in that area.

    • Photo: Matthew Tomlinson

      Matthew Tomlinson answered on 15 Nov 2013:

      My opinion is that there are stem cells in almost every organ, in fact I think they are on the outside of blood vessels (arteries, veins etc). This is why we find stem cells at sites of injury, because most of the time blood vessels get broken, meaning there is blood in the injury site and this contains stem cells. I’ve not read the paper Dave mentions about stem cells in the ovaries so I can’t comment but it seems unlikely that there are stem cells which can make more eggs. But there are definitely stem cells in the heart, liver, bones, fat etc.

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