Shamed scientist's 'breakthrough'
South Korean Woo Suk Hwang became famous after claiming to have extracted the world's first stem cells from a cloned embryo.
With his research discredited, he was dismissed from his post at the university, and charged with fraud and embezzlement.
The latest twist came from the Harvard Stem Cell Institute in the US, who looked closely at his data, and found the cells were actually from a different type of embryo.
Researchers said that the distinct "genetic fingerprint" of the stem cells means they may be the first in the world to be extracted from embryos produced by the so-called "virgin birth" method, or parthenogenesis.
However, before Hwang, no one had managed to produce a human embryo using parthenogenesis which lived long enough to allow the extraction of viable stem cells.
"In fact they had produced the world's first patient-specific embryonic stem cell, and that is very valuable.
clipped from: news.bbc.co.uk 