The main reason for harking-on about protein-structure - haemoglobin in blood or invasive virus-capsids - is that it's the visible face of something that's ultra-specific. Whether transporting energy (oxygen-carrier haemoglobin), or generating disease-symptoms (virus-capsid-proteins).
Basically, similar remarks apply to genetic research: it's useful if you are able to identify
differences in visible hereditary factors. (see POPULATIONS PAGE)
The key point is that differences are very hard to detect - in fact they're invisible unless you study genes from diseased individuals. That downplays significantly the role of embryonic stemcells as opposed to adult stemcells. If you take iPS, it's an in vivo protocol that uses adult skin cells: you already know how the genes will grow in nerve & muscle, so you know the disease profile (this is in addition to well-advertized downsides to ESC, auto-immune rejection-response to foreign genes).
The idea of the website is you can regard genes as 'virtual' which become animated only when key control-sequences are 'programmed' & a stemcell grows into nerve or muscle. Basically, the program is what counts & we know it affects only a very few control-genes.
The rationale for ESCs is 'breeding genes' enables an understanding of human living-systems
- ie PHYSIQUE-
otherwise there's no rationale!
So, is that what's happening? Not at all - see POPULATIONS PAGE
A downside of ESC research into chronic disorders of nervous/muscle systems is you're isolating disease-traits as genetic - in fact, the causes of MS & other malfunctions are extraordinarily complex. There are a multiplicity of factors: herbal, exercise (lifestyle), environment (synthetic drugs). The nervous-system has inbuilt responses to these types of stimuli.
see CUTTING-EDGE examples
gene-culture
'breeding' genes
others
