干细胞若干定义的相关探讨

背景：近10年来干细胞研究所取得的巨大进展,不仅影响和促进了生物学及其相关基础科学,而且还在医学、药物开发、农业等许多领域得到广泛的应用,目前已成为研究的热点问题。目的：在干细胞的定义上还存在一些需要探讨的问题,明确定义将有利于干细胞研究的快速发展。方法：回顾干细胞的发展和概念提出,特别是通过中英文权威定义的比较,提出作者的看法。结果与结论：干细胞的定义上还存在一些问题值得探讨,特别是一些中英文表述不同影响了理解。例如,“多能干细胞”对应译成两个单词：PluripotentStemCell和MultipotentStemCell,然而Pluripotent和Multipotent两个单词的英文意义不同。为了学术交流和沟通,作者提出将PluripotentStemCell称为“万能干细胞”,而保留MultipotentStemCell为“多能干细胞”的定义。以上结论供广大同仁探讨,以利于抛砖引玉。

Issues about definitions of stem cells

BACKGROUND： In the past 10 years, the stem cell research has been a hot topic while it has achieved great progress in biology and enhanced more impacts on studies in medicine, drug development, agriculture as well as other applied fields. OBJECTIVE： To investigate some issues related to definition of stem cells as clear terms without confusion will be beneficial to the rapid development of stern cell research. METHODS： We reviewed the development and concept of stem cells, and compared definitions in English and Chinese language version with our personal knowledge and practical experiments. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION： Some confusions exist in recent stem cell terms between Chinese and English versions. For example, the term of ＂multipotent stem cell＂ in Chinese language might be interpreted to either ＂pluripotent stem cell＂ or ＂multi-potent stem cell＂, which represents two types of biological developmental potential of stem cells. In order to academic exchanges and communication, we propose ＂universal kaleidoscope stem cell＂ in Chinese language for the term of ＂pluripotent stem cell＂, and retains the ＂multi-potent stem cell＂ as it original one in Chinese language. More discussion is included as reference in order to attract better ideas from peers.