Echoes of phlogiston in stem cell biology

Monday, September 21, 2009 - 11:35 in Physics & Chemistry

Before it was learned that matter burns by taking up oxygen, most chemists sought to explain combustion as the release of a mysterious substance, which they named 'phlogiston.' Phlogiston theory was a conceptual breakthrough that helped chemists conduct experiments and share ideas. Only when it came to pinning down the distinctive physical properties of phlogiston did it become clear that no such thing exists. Now an opinion piece by Arthur Lander, published in BioMed Central's open access Journal of Biology, argues that the idea of stem cells - a major conceptual breakthrough in biology - is running into similar troubles as investigators try to pin it down to a set of distinctive molecular characteristics...

Read the whole article on

More from

Latest Science Newsletter

Get the latest and most popular science news articles of the week in your Inbox! It's free!

Check out our next project, Biology.Net