Astrocytes are the multi purpose handy-men of the brain and spinal cord: they help compose the Blood Brain Barrier,the are involved in nutrient provision to tissues of the nervous system and in the scarring of brain and spinal cord following traumatic injury.
But astrocytes have also been implicated in several brain disorders.
So why the hoopla at the University of Wisconsin when it was shown that several billion of these guys can be produced from just one single stem cell.
Well it enables complex diseases to be more easily modeled I suppose.
Have a read of this article from science.slashdot.org (and the abstract from Nature) and decide your self.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/05/23/0322248/Human-Astrocytes-Developed-From-Stem-Cells
http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nbt.1877.html
What are Astrocytes?Here's your answer- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrocyte
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