Quote:
Originally Posted by Fish
Yeah, I didn't mean that humans would develop a polyp stage. Just that our research into how this animal does this could have considerable impact in the future. There are correlations between the way the jellyfish goes about cellular differentiation, and the way human stem cells do the same thing. I wouldn't be so hasty to say we can learn nothing because we are such different species....
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First source isn't very informative at all. He basically says because we have the ability to differentiate at the embryonic level, and adult SC's can be manipulated into the differentiation process of embryonic SC's and used for the treatment of spinal cord damage, and these hydra have a similar process without manipulation, that we could "learn some basic things" about it.
That guy basically provided a muddy parallel without linking the two. he didn't really provide any evidence for his soft conclusion.
Second one comes from a much better source. What they are basically saying, however, is we can use them as model organisms for the process. We have several model organisms in genetics, but that does not mean we can adopt their characteristics into our genetic functional repertoire and call it good. There are far more steps involved in that.
Similar genome does not mean we have similar processes. Suffice it to say that it's far more complicated, and gene therapy has many obstacles. Promising, but many obstacles.