Slashdot Mirror
Australian Science Makes the Regenerating Mouse
FruFox writes "Australian scientists have created mice which can regenerate absolutely any tissue except for the tissues of the brain. Heart, lungs, entire limbs, you name it. This is the first time this has been seen in mammals. The potential implications are positively mammoth. I thought this warranted attention. :)"
ignoring PETA: i wonder which organization will be first to denounce the use of this sort of thing in humans?
they're only the most intelligent creatures on earth
Yes the mouse is a mammal and, yes, the mammoth was a mammal. There's no need to be redundant about it.
Again.
Yeah, it means we have to aim for the head when the monster-mice attack. Personally, I welcome our new genetically modified near-unkillable regenerative mice overlords.
That aside, I first thought they had made a computer mouse that generated power when moved á la regenerative braking in electrical cars.
Money for nothing, pix for free
I do hope this is applied to humans soon. there are way too many people on waiting lists for heart, liver, kidney transplants. Also, maybe this is a new hope for people that have gotten limbs amputated, or were born with defects.
I'M NOT ANGRY!
that succeeding generations will now be called regenerations?
They called it Wolverine did they?
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
No no no!
The correct synthax is "I, for one, welcome are new mouse overlords"
The slashdot summary says Australian scientists, but the article says "US Research Lab" and US based researchers. Unless there is some information that I am missing, I would say that this was a US breakthrough.
...his name wasn't Dr. Connors by chance was it? Accept since this guy was messing around with mice I guess we'd be calling him "The Rodent" instead of "The Lizard."
Homer has both his arms stuck in two wending machines...
... ?
Fireman with saw: Mr. Simpson, there's no easy way to say this, were going to have to saw your arms off.
Homer: Ohhhh, but they'll grow back, won't they?
Fireman: Yeah, sure. They'll grow back.
Other fireman: Aren't you just holding on to the can?
Homer: Your point being
...can't regenerate the Wallabies
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
Could this be used in conjunction with other gene therapy to reverse birth defects in people like ectrodactyl hands. Cut them off and make them regenerate as a normal hand? Or entire new arms for Thalidomide babies? Would someone blind from birth generate the ability to see or is that too heavily dependant on brain tissue?
Now I can just retire and keep selling kidneys on eBay!
So if one of those bites me do i become mouseman?
Do i get the amazing ability to pee all over the place and crawl into small spaces?
Or do i need to irradiate it first?
Since Australia already has a huge problem with billions of unwanted rodents, rabbits, rats and mice in particular, I don't know what the advent of zombie creatures will bring them now. Oh yes, they will never leave the lab. That's what they want us to believe.
Not to be fearful again, but ahem, do we really need mammals that can only be killed by headshots? Don't these guys ever learn from zombie movies? Think of the CHILDREN!!! I guess it's time to zip over to S-Mart and grab a shotgun, because I KNOW some mouse will sooner or later BITE one of the scientists and then all hell breaks loose.
Anyone seen Bruce Campbell lately? We might need him.
By the same token, if these people go public with it they probably already have a preprint up somewhere. Anyone in the field know anything?
Pathman, Free (as in GPL) 3D Pac Man
Am I the only one who thinks that phrases like "gained the power of regeneration" are more appropriate for comic books or RPGs than professors of immunology announcing research results? : )
Oi! Oi! Oi?
Hey when I read the article, it kinda says "Wistar Institute, a US biomedical research centre"... Hmmm that would mean it's US not Australian scientists.... Hmmm....
But the story is on "The Australian"... So if we can claim Russel Crowe is Australian (god knows why... the bloody Kiwi is an embaressment) I guess we can also claim ownership of this.
It reads Australiam scientists. That should be Australiam sciemtists.
..that will never make it to human trials in America. Reason? It's another one of those taboo research topics; it's fine and dandy to clone a sheep or a mouse, it's fine to use crocodiles to fight HIV, it's acceptible to take a look at the human genes for eye-color and hair color, but the minute you even mention any of these actually going into clinical trials, or even attempting to get government funding, and you're shutdown for life.
The research climate in this country's starting to get ridiculous. We hear about all of these new advances almost daily in the news, but we're still waiting to see any practical use come from them. These are things that save lives, things that make terrible diseases easier to fight.
I know if I lost an arm or a leg or more importantly a heart or lung, I'd love the ability to grow one back..
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
gee.. that sounds like a neat place to live.. ;)
huh.. wuzzat?..
oh Australian.. nevermind I'm already there
Lead me not into temptation... I can find it myself 8+)
You see why open source is a good thing? The Quake 3 source hasn't been open for a month and already the REGENERATION upgrade has been incorporated into mice. Now let's all hope and pray that the QUAD DAMAGE code doesn't fall into the wrong hands.
How they'd treat a person who has a heart damaged say, in a car crash, or was pierced by an object?
put them on a heart machine while the heart regenerates itself? This sort of technology would certainly put an end to transplants.
"Scientists have long known that less complex creatures have an impressive ability to regenerate. Many fish and amphibians can regrow internal organs or even whole limbs."
It occurs to me that anything that'd let your penis grow back and therefore let one breed more (excluding slashdotters) wouldn't be dropped from the feature list for more 'complex' lifeforms without a whopper of a bug.
So thanks to this new technology, I won't need to buy a new mouse after having crushed it into the wall when losing to some random FPS or RTS !
Outstanding !
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
I for one welcome our new adamantium-skeleton mouse over...oh, wait!
It's an Australian paper talking about research going on in the US, by US scientists, which is going to be presented at a British conference.
This has nothing to do with Australia, sorry guys.
(Note that this is just news syndication going on here. News is widely shared between different organizations. The actual news desk at any given news outlet is usually quite small.)
The only thing about this news that's Australian is the name of the paper you decided to link the story from.
A search for the researchers name comes up with her working at Penn State, in the good ol' U.S.A.
"Heber-Katz, who is also an adjunct professor in the pathology and laboratory medicine department at Penn's School of Medicine, now devotes about 80 percent of her time to mapping the gene loci that confer these unique regeneration properties and analyzing their patterns of expression."
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
It is quite remarkable. The only organ that did not grow back was the brain.
made me frown a bit. So they actually removed a piece of the brain of a mouse while keeping it alive?..but I'm sceptical. Really, if this can be controlled by just changing a dozen genes, then why on earth do we (mammals) not have this ability already? It would obviously be a huge evolutionary advantage -- unless there are some pretty grim side effects.
Sterility perhaps?
As someone else here pointed out, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and, in these cases, extraordinary caution. I'm looking forward to the results though.
Couple of errors in the summary:
The lab responsible is in the US not Australia, even though the report comes from The Australian. The paper isn't that parochial, you know.
Also, it sounds like a serendipitous discovery rather than intentional creation. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
As the work doesn't appear to have been published yet, my guess is that it will turn out to be a bit less remarkable than it currently sounds.
...put my brain in a bottle and let me regrow the rest? Intriguing.
The head shot is the only true stopper.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I hate to ask, but given the penchant of biotech copanies to patent anything that walks crawls or oozes, has this genetic sequence been patented?
Also I've always been fascinated to understand how a regenerated body part knows when to stop growing - visions of Tetsuo's transformations at the end of Akira come queasily to mind.
You are not the only one who doen'ts know the difference between a comma and a point.
What - a mouse can regenerate a Mammoth? And so can any mammal. Well, that bodes well for future of male cosmetic surgery.
It does not work for the brain though. Blondes will scream discrimation! if they can pronounce the word.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
Uh oh... bulding a Terminator mouse is one thing, but larger species are better left extinct...
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
...check out Robert Becker's The Body Electric, a controversial yet superb look at the role of electricity in the regeneration of tissue and bone (mainly on salamanders) - or "energy medicine" to some.
As an aside, I understand that if a new born baby loses a fingertip, it will regenerate. Don't try this at home though. The question remains: why can't we as we get older?
excpet for the tissues of the brain Does slashdot accept submissions from mice?
So what makes this new or Australian?
There I said it. If we can identify these genes in humans, then I say we start clinical trials right away. There are people who are going to die because they've suffered a horrible injury or are waiting for a transplant. Certainly some of them would jump at the chance for life. Do we always have to wait 20 years after a medical discovery before we even see any practical application of it?
..Now if we could implement this biotech into bottles of goo, we could have working healing potions!
..And no head shots, mind you! ;)
The mind boggles at the possibilites..
Real life FPS, sharp swords in Live roleplaying etc etc - just drink a healing potion afterwards!
File not found. Fake it(Y/N)? _
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/1999/living_
check the date...
And here was I hoping that they'd made a PC mouse that recharged its batteries from the motion as you use it ...
The mice might be sued for regenerating without permission, or could they claim prior natural art ?
"The digits grew back, complete with Joints"
Ganja spliffs growing out of fingers to *ucking cool.
I can see it now, the new penis enlargement spam. Simply grow a new penis on a mouse and attach, it really does work!
I long for the day, in the far future, when I can lose an arm is a horrific fishing accident and automatically grow it back again.
Of course, waiting five years to have a toddler's arm hanging out of your shoulder isn't ideal either...
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
Or not.
We hand our software industry off to India, and we put up barriers to the next "new" thing being biotech.
Long live Intelligent Design.
Long live making biotech illegal or un-funded.
I am off to returning to my Walmart job now.
Oh no! Now we will have regenerating trolls in real life as well! ..This might be the end of slashdot as we know it!
Quick - do they regenerate fire damage and holy damage as well? What about +1 weapons?
File not found. Fake it(Y/N)? _
Great! So any time soon, violent thugs our children should be protected from and corporation executives -but I repeat myself- will be able to afford a terminator body accompanied by a terminated brain.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
What's most curious about this is why less complex creatures have an enormous ability to regenerate but more complex ones don't. If it is a matter of a few genes, you would expect that random mutations would impart the self-regeneration trait onto us but evolution has chosen not to.
I can only surmise that for complex creatures, self-regeneration is not only worthless, but is undesirable (since no complex creatures seem to have self-regeneration but many less complex creatures do). This, of course applies to complex creatures as a species anyways. I think I'd find it extremely valuable for myself.
I don't know the answer but perhaps it has to do with the thinking aspect of complex creatures and how that affects mating. I'd be interested in hearing others hypothesize about this.
Sunny
Be my Friend
...a Beowulf Cluster of these! Yeah, a regenerating mouse cluster!
... to achieve immortality. We are working for them and still don't realize it.. Douglas Adams was right!!!!
I fuse with Mercer every single day...
Scientists at Slashdot have created a perl script which can regenerate absolutely any typos, except for those introduced by the editors.
:)
This is the first time I've seen this on a website.
The implications are positively google.
I thought this warranted attention.
Ah yes... but the article summary says it's Australiam scientists so clearly we're talking about a hybrid.
There's a period between brain and heart changing the meaning of the paragraph considerably from your interpretation, might want to reread that.
Unfortunately this breakthrough doesn't apply to brains, so the Slashdot editors are screwed.
...because I think this is a truly amazing news item regardless of socio-poltical concerns or minor posting errors. It is *very* encouraging news indeed and I read it first on /. for a change. :)
According to Google News, this story is only on two papers in the entire world - even though the story is three days old. It does make me wonder if the story is particularly credible. If they had proof and the scientists were contactable, a story this large would have been in a lot of major newspapers within a few hours of it's release - or at least a credible scientific journal or two.
Something smells fishy to me.
This is great news. Hopefully this will work on humans too in the near future.
I wonder how much the mice have been suffering though. This don't seem very nice experiments from the mice's point of view.
Did I spell mice's right?
-- Cheers!
you have to shoot zombies in the head. The rest of their bodies regenerate.
You better get out that mouse trap of rodent slaying +5, and fast.
Obviously the submitter and the editors found out the hard way that brain tissue doesn't grow back...
Daniel
Carpe Diem
I thought it was already there in humans, when you leave your ear pierced without use for long enough it starts to heal, or doesn't it? So accordingly the same could apply to other tissues, just give it enough time ranging from years to centuries.
So it all depends on the complexity, if we can only accelerate this process, that would really produce a healing potion then maybe later there would be another advance where you can get an increase in your bank balance by killing pedestrians.
Regenerating mouse = longer time to play with it before it dies and has to be eaten.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Pinky and the...oh wait, maybe not...
Lawyers across the country are quivering in anticipation of the largest class action lawsuits ever filed, positively mammoth...
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
regenerate your cock if a crazy lover slices it off
I just found the box to change my sig. Um.... [timeless witticism].
http://www.chrcrm.org/medal03.htm
A link from 2003, has a bit more to it than the article cited in the original post.
They found the infinite lifes POKE for mice! I hope they didn't have to ram a Multiface up their arses...
Thought we needed a better term for them. Trolldents. Now if we can do this in other rodents, we could get regenerating beavers, who could keep regrowing their pelts after we skin them.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Look like the professor discovered something incredibly similar - about 7 years ago!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/56799.stm/
"type sentence structure proper!"
/.'s lame lamness filter. ]
properly.
[ quote lowercased to avoid
http://www.wistar.org/research_facilities/heberkat z/research.htm
It therefore follows that they will have to enslave us humans to all work as dairy farmers and in cheese processing plants purely to create all the food they need to survive.
Trust the bloody Australians to sell out the human race to our new mice overlords!
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
It does sound great. I just wonder if there is likely to be an increased chnace of cancer with this sort of regerative tissue. Mind you if someone does get cancer perhaps with this technology the affected part of the body can simply be removed and regrown...
How usefull can this be?
See http://www.wistar.org/news_info/pressreleases/pr_8 .9.01.html
(Score:5, Not Funny)
Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to stock up on fire and acid.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Now I can smoke all the pot I want and drink all the booze I want. Looks like in the near future, I can regenerate my lungs and liver too. Fuck the brain...who needs it anyway. I second Bob Dylan - EVERYBODY MUST GET STONED.
"TYPE SENTENCE STRUCTURE PROPER," is pretty poor grammar itself. "Properly" might be a better choice, since it would be an adverb modifying "TYPE." Of course, the meaning is still pretty ambiguous. It could mean that you're requesting them to type the words "SENTENCE STRUCTURE" properly, or it could mean that you're asking them to properly type out their sentences. A better command would be, "use proper sentence structure."
"What country is this motherfucker, ain't no country I ever heard of, they speak english in Australiam?"
The above is a run on sentence. You've joined three independent clauses using only commas, and the clauses cannot be construed as three elements in a list of some sort. You should have used semicolons at the least, although a period and a question mark would have been better. You should also have capitalized English.
Also, since you're so against colloquial grammar, I should point out that once you separated the clauses into sentences, "aint' no country I ever heard of," is still improper grammar. It would be lacking a subject, since it's only a verb phrase, and isn't an imperative sentence. Also, "I ever heard of," is incorrect; you should say, "I've ever heard of." A true pedant would also likely disagree with your use of "ain't," and your ending a sentence with a preposition. A better sentence might be, "I've never heard of Australiam."
Since in the first sentence, you're addressing "motherfucker," there should be a comma prior to it. "What country is this, motherfucker?" Unless you meant "this motherfucker" to be the object of the verb "is."
"They speak English in Australiam," is not a question. It is a statement. It's more proper to ask, "do they speak English in Australiam?"
"Poor post from the submitter and even poorer by slashdot because no fucker proof read the submission," is not a complete sentence. The section before the "because" is a pair of noun phrases, without any matching verb phrase. The section beginning with "because" is a dependent clause, and needs to be attached to an independent clause to become a sentence.
You also seem to be missing one or more words in the phrase, "even poorer by slashdot," Unless you're accusing "slashdot" itself of writing a post. I was not aware that Slashcode had gained sentience. Also, Slashdot is a proper noun, and should be capitalized. In addition, proofread is one word, not two.
Also, assuming you meant, "poor
Of course, one could go in many directions in revising the sentence, depending on, for instance, how they prefer to write interjections like, "God damn!"
I realize that the first part of your post is a paraphrase of dialogue in Pulp Fiction. However, if you're going to be a stickler for formal grammar, you'd do well not to quote Samuel L. Jackson. He would have immediately understood the story submission, because he speaks English, rather than dissecting it.
You know, on a purely Karmic level, we're gonna have to pay up bigtime eventually...
Imagine how much more likely you'd be to take risks if you could grow new body parts :)
/.
I think this is one of the coolest things I've ever read on
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
When I was looking around for some more news on this, I came across this article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/08/01080 7080356.htm
Seems like the regenerative abilities of MRL mice have been know for quite a while.
Seems like Professor Ellen Heber-Katz did the initial discovery in 1998.
Though in this case I reckon the Military could get very in this kind of 'medicine'. Imagine an army of self healing soldiers. Get a leg blown off and then grow it back.
It just says that other pressures have been greater than the pressure to (keep the ability to) regenerate. Or the costs of being able to regenerate are probably prohibitive.
The competing pressures might include (for example) a pressure to be smart or strong enough not to lose body parts in the first place, or a pressure to develop coping strategies when a limb is lost. Or the pressure to give food and resources to offspring, over attempting immortality. Or the pressure to have more complex tissues (even if they are more difficult to regenerate), although the article sheds a shadow of doubt on this last one. If these competing pressures are great enough, and more importantly, the pressure to keep the regeneration trait is low enough, the trait will simply drift away (randomly mutate) into nonfunctional genetic code. It doesn't mean it is completely undesirable.
More "complex" animals like humans don't lose a lot of body parts on a day to day basis. And those who do, have their (evolutionary) fitness determined by their ability to cope with the loss, rather than by their ability to regain those parts.
One (big?) concern of having an increased ability to REgenerate might be an increased ability to generate... While a 3rd arm/2nd head might provide great casting advantages in the Hitchhiker's sequal, having random growths appearing in one's body isn't the best news one can have.
If they inject the cells from those mice into
us, we'll grow mouse parts if amputated??
The best planning can be done after the project completes.
My real question is how long will it take to regenerate? Mice Grow Up rather fast. But if it will take 18 years to regenerate a missing leg, or will it take a year or two? Or what about people who want to do body alterations could they cut their noses in half and make sure they dont heal together and they end up with two noses. Or someone with a serious arm damage. Could this cause them to have 2 forearms and hands?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
As previously reported on slashdot, scientists have also found it possible to replace blood with ice-cold saline, and revive the subject hours later. In other words, before long it will be possible to survive any bodily injury as long as you get medical attention before brain damage begins. With this, you can then grow back whatever was damaged, too.
I can't find a link handy, but I know that research into preventing brain cells from dying after trauma is progressing nicely as well. Ultimately we'll reach the point where just about any non-catastrophic physical injury is recoverable, assuming prompt medical attention.
When all that's left are death, aging (but we might be fixing that too) and psychological problems, maybe people will finally realize just how horribly we've been neglecting mental health for so long.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
Go to the dentist and get the bad tooth yanked out. Hey presto! Here comes a new one :-)
Ive already checked the journals on this one, and the research involving the regrowth of toes etc has not been published, so i can't say much about that. However, several papers have been published on heart muscle cell regeneration, and it looks nice. Regeneration of bodyparts requires plasticity in cell type differentiation. Either primary cell types undergo a revertion to a more totipotent form or reserves of stem-like cells multiply and differentiate to form the new bodypart in question. Generaly, this is Not A Good Thing, ie cancer, and so the body has a whole slew of checks and balances to prevent this from occuring. Im guessing that in more primitive organisms, short lifespan and low cell turnover (they're cold blooded) means that the adaptive advanges of regenerating missing bodyparts outweighs the higher risks of developing cancer.
Finally, I small hope for the Republicans...
...regrow my virginity and sell that on eBay. Now that's more worthwhile.
Staying circumcised would be problematical...
That way they'll never go hungry ;-)
http://www.vroma.org/images/mcmanus_images/brothel _painting1.jpg
There is none. Australia is practically an American colony these days.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
This will be very interesting to see what happens. growing a new kidney, or hand would be great, as long as it is safe.
..........FULL STOP.
Who are these Australiams anyway? The article is about US scientist working at:
The Wistar Institute
3601 Spruce Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
215-898-3700
Get a free ipod.
> It could power the frickin' laser beam!
To repeat it for the 1001st time: An optical mouse does *not* use a *laser*!!! It's a simple led. Or else you would maybe see a proper and very thin line of light coming out of your mouse and a very small point on the mousepad. (Or you have to have some moving parts to make the laser actually scanning the whole surface below it.)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I've always had this theory that if something like this was enabled in humans they'd turn into a giant cancer tumor like something from an old sci-fi movie.
Surprised noone mentioned this before. But in the Highlander series, if you were immortal, you could no longer have children.
Think about it, the Immortals cannot have children, they can heal from any wound, and they can only be killed by being beheaded.
Maybe the lines between fact & fiction might be getting a little blurrier...
So we're going to have everyone in running around in brand new bodies and Alzheimer-afflicted brains. . .?
</sarcasm>
What?
Not to belittle the important REAL applications, I want to be the first mad scientist to modify the formula so I can get the third arm and second head that Zaphod Beeblebrox popularized.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Isn't it a contradiction if the mice can regenerate any tissue "excpet" for the heart, lungs, entire limbs "you name it"?
Note the period between brain and heart. Usually that means some sort of ending. In other words, the brain can't be regenerated but everything else can.
Geez someone pissed in your corn flakes this morning
The theories I have heard, as to why regeneration is switched off in larger creatures, boil down to this:
1. Cancer -
Enable easy regeneration, and the organism suffers from more run away cancers. With the need to keep a larger number of complex and different cells running as needed, damaged cells must auto destruct to prevent the rise of cancers.
Free running regeneration leads to tumors.
2. Hole Plugging -
When a large creature suffers a large wound - the number One way for that creature to survive is simply plug the hole as quickly as possible. Scar tissue grows relatively quickly and completely, preventing blood loss and preventing infections. Even with rapidly clotting and healing wounds - infection can kill the organism. The fast patch scar tissue saves life where otherwise a regenerating individual would die from just being slower healing.
3. Strength -
Regrowing a full adult arm or leg requires a lot of energy, the bones may be softer, the muscles weaker. So the limb will be less usefull, and more energy consuming. That works against the survival of the individual.
The human species survival scheme is based upon reproduction rates, not unbreakable individuals.
Being able to reproduce once a month, and birth offspring once a year, sometimes with twins or more, rapidly grows out a human population.
Like smaller organisms, if you make enough copies of yourself - the individual health is not as important. As a social creature, a larger tribe of humans provides strength and protection for the individual. Six Billion+ humans on earth have shown this survival plan to be most effective.
I would love a shot of regenerative juice, as long as I don't die of cancer at age 40. Even if a missing arm would take 5 years to grow back, it would be a welcome ability to the human race.
We want our intellectual property back!
Fascinating Entendre
I thought that the Democrats had the bleeding hearts.
Erectile Tissue Implants
I just can't avoid the nagging feeling that we will eventually be smoten for pulling crap like this...
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
So now the mice will reproduce by division
Other lines of mice are capable of similar things than just the MRL mouse, and even the MRL mouse has some serious limitations. For example, Heber-Katz cryo-injured the mouse heart and it healed, but other more relevant damage did not. Ischemic heart cells did not recover, which are those lacking oxygen supply, as in a heart-attack. Most of the other regenerations were not nearly as impressive, as several organs have the ability for significant regeneration anyway. Heber-Katz is known for her press releases being very sensational... and coming out before she presents her evidence. still, some of the papers she has released have some pretty cool stuff, just not as groundbreaking as popular news media would have you believe.
This is fantastic news. Now all of the little amputee mice out there can get their legs back. Seriously, we see stories all of the time about diseases being cured in lab rats, but when do you see the, "Hey, remember how we cured _____ disease in rats? Well, now we bridged the gap and it works on humans too" story. I, for one, am tired of mice getting all of the good health care.
Finance tutorials and more! Understandfinance
deBeers...
Because a mouse is forever.
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
They corrected the spelling in the post to "Australian" from "Australiam" but couldn't be bothered to fix the word itself, since it wasn't Australian (or even Australiam) scientists but U.S. ones.
Infuriate left and right
Did the researchers working on this turninto lizards? Just checking....
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Applied to chickens - I wonder how many legs we would be able to get out of a chicken before we could harvest the breast? Or wings, for that matter.
First, evolution would be more aptly described as 'survival of the adequate' rather than 'survival of the fittest'. That no complex creatures have regenerative capabilities means only that said creatures can adequately survive long enough to reproduce healthy offspring without those capabilities.
Second, there is no choice in evolution. Evolution can't choose attributes because it is a mindless process. Sure, sometimes there is concurrent evolution of similar features, but it isn't like Mother Nature is saying to herself, ``hey, this works great for frogs, so let's do poodles the same way.''
Third, it could be the case that more advanced animals lost this capability because of either side effects that the genes that coded for it conferred or simply because it didn't offer an advantage. There are roughly a bzillion other factors aside from the actual expression of a gene that are in play with regard to whether or not the gene survives to the next generation.
Dying is good for the species.
Makes sense that some genes might turn off some of the mechanisms for death.
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
Nothing in the slightest. If you don't know why, you're missing some very basic principles of evolution.
It's not about what is "good" for the organism, it's about the organism reproducing succesfully.
Are the MICE Australian or not?
10100111001
Laws of demand and supply say otherwise. There are going to be so many kidneys for sale that no one will want yours! I mean, if someone like Gene Simmons starts selling HIS kidneys on ebay, how do you expect to compete with that!
Itchy and Scratchy have been doing this for at 15 years now...
Nothing to see here please move along...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagomorph
The Lagomorphs, order Lagomorpha, are an order of mammals of which there are two families, Leporidae (hares and rabbits), and Ochotonidae (pikas).
-- Boycott Shell
Us humans are left with the crumbs from rodent health research. We've just about cured all disease, cancer, aging, and now trauma in mice and rats. How? Billions of dollars spent researching disease and testing cures on the little guys. Maybe Douglas Adams was right.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
"So is this gonna make my johnson bigger, or what?" - Master Shake
10100111001
...mouse tissue regenerates you.
I thought this warranted attention.
Yeah...I thought this story warranted attention, too...three days ago, when I submitted it. Too bad my submission was rejected within a half-hour.
This is the third time a story I submitted has been rejected out of hand, only to be accepted from someone else days, if not weeks, later. I have a fair idea why, too, and let me just say to the person concerned: I sincerely hope that abusing your editorial power in this manner makes you feel better about yourself, since it's clear you have some major issues.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
The article has almost no details on how these mice were made. It also uses the words "discover" and "create" pretty much interchangeably. So are these mice the result of a deliberate experiment, cutting-edge genetic engineering, or a natural occurrence that a scientist luckily happened to notice as was the case with penecillin?
Does this mean if my vengful girlfriend injected me with hormones and the regeration cells then cut my body off in the middle of the night I would wake up with Britney's body?
Dont tell her that! She'd love to get me!
I think we can see where all thi research is leading...
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
Find out what the stars used to look like. At least Michael Jackson can get a new nose.
I wonder how long it's gonna be before Wolverine is asked to hand in his resignation...
Even worse, for those of you that have read 'Scanners Live in Vain' by Cordwainer Smith and are familiar with the Haberman device, whatever will happen to cats if the Heber-Katz device is invented?
Ignore this signature. By order.
They've got a whole Wolverine... :->
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Man, Splinter is going to kick so much ass now.
When humanity finally sinks into evolutionary obscurity we'll leave behind a legacy of near-immortal supermice! Perhaps that what was what the mice were after all along when they built the earth...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This is like Wolverine... But I think this is freakish! These things only work in mice, and not even normal on them...
http://polaralex.blogspot.com http://www.polaralex.tk *Define Reality*..*
does this mean that from now on the spammer's strategy is going to change from "grow 2 inches in 2 weeks" to "cut your penis off and re-grow it as big as you want" ??
Cool as hell!!
This sig can be distributed under the LGPL license
What the hell are you even trying to say? What the crap does "chromosomal irregularity" mean?
Of course it's rare; hormones and genes nearly always go together. But if you change the hormones, the genes will express themselves differently. (Give an adult male estrogen injections and he'll grow breasts, for instance.) Which was his original point---hormones can be used to make someone into (well, to a certain extent) the opposite sex.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Where do you think we'd be if older people who are stuck in their ways and have power and authority stuck around for longer, and retained their powerful positions?
There are advantages in replacing old minds with fresh young ones who challenge the old perspectives. We love children for a reason.
That is facilitated by death, and also by crippling injuries both physical and mental.
These advantages are particularly obvious in our human social structures - for the time being, anyway. As an example, in the recent article about computers automatically learning language grammars, there was an interesting comment that linguistics won't move on until Chomsky dies... There's some truth to that in all of science, politics, etc.
Complex social evolution does not necessarily favour health for all individuals.
An interesting corollary to that hypothesis is that there exist changes to the structures of society, and changes to the structures in which we propagate knowledge and learning and questioning, and changes to the way we collectively think, which would adjust evolutionary pressures to favour greater individual health, particularly including the expression of long-evolved genes which we're carrying already but not using, like those involved in tissue regeneration and dare I say it, longevity.
-- Jamie
Respawning, QUAD DAMAGE mosquitoes. Ouch. Death by blood sucking.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
Why do I get the feeling that I will now get spam trying to sell me magic pills that will regenerate my member with 10x growth? Or give me a 3rd nut?
Imagine, we don't have to kill cows anymore.
We can just amputate the part we want to eat, and have it grow back. Fillet minion for the masses.
You could raise a sheep, and have a leg a month.
mmm.....
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
Ooh, am I ever going to get some serious SHUT UP, HIPPIE mileage out of this.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
So if you have your brain scooped out and put on a dish,
it would grow back a skull, a neck and a torso with limbs.
Quite thrilling I would say, think about it.
The reasoning being utterly flawless, one may nevertheless experience
a few unreasonable hesitations, but that's only normal
with forms of amusement as innovative as this. Don't worry about that. It'll pass.
"Here's to the habeman, up and out..."
Aren't you thinking of "The Game of Rat and Dragon", though?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
So much to read... so little time.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Bigfoot was spotted in a Billings, MT fast food restaurant eating the lettuce out of several Bic Mac sandwiches, giving rise to speculation that this rarely seen species is in fact vegetarian. Rumors that the "Sasquatch" was fond of eating kittens and other house and farm animals seem to be quelched by this event.
There is video footage, but the manager claims that McDonald's headquarters has barred him from releasing it or making comment. Customers who were suprised to find out that the large feral primate was not a restaurant promotion but in fact a real customer when the gentle giant became frightened by a blonde child and dashed across the tables and condiments counter and through the glass windows.
Bobbi Staunton said, "Lottie wanted to get her photo taken with the big monkey, so I went to put her on his knee. I think she was scared of him, but he was definitely scared of her. As soon as she looked at him real close, with her light blue eyes, he just started bouncing off the walls.. running and screaming!"
Sarah Brosnan, Director of McDonald's US Communications, did not return calls about this event at press time. Her staff did say that McDonald's does not confirm or refute the existence or other details about Bigfoot or any other paranormal characters. They refused to answer questions about the West Virginia Moth Man, and seemed to treat the whole affair as a joke.
Yellowstone County Sheriff Chuck Maxwell said, "I seen this Bigfoot several times. I ain't afraid of him, and he needs to stay where he belongs, in the woods." Which prompts the question -- why _has_ bigfoot come out into such a populated area.
Environmentalists have suggested that deforestation and the alluring smell of french fries may be an answer.
Althea Zanecosky, dietician at the Philadelphia Zoo states, "Monkeys like french fries. It's a fact of nature. They steal fries from kids all the time. And let's not forget, Bigfoot IS a monkey."
"When the solution is simple, God is answering." -- Albert Einstein
"We have experimented with amputating or damaging several different organs, such as the heart, toes, tail and ears, and just watched them regrow," she said.
That's gotta hurt, especially for the non-regenerating mice in the control group.
Well, I guess they've let the cat out of the bag. We heard this straight from the horse's mouth, after all. I just hope this turns out to be really useful and they're not just barking up the wrong tree; until then I'm sure they'll avoid making mountains out of mole-hills. There will be many copycats of any product resulting from this, but I'm sure that these researchers will receive the lion's share of the profits.
When I first read the title, I thought they finally have a fix for broken mouse. I broke so many mouse playing diablo II, I was about to rejoice for a self-healing mouse, alas there is no such thing yet.
...that I almost had a heart attack when I read it. Then I got to the part where it's not ready for humans, just mice, so I decided to wait on the heart attack.
Of course you'd love to grow a lost arm, leg, lung, etc. Who wouldn't? Unless of course, it made your testicles fall off in the process.
The last country that pushed human experimentation, quit doing so in 1945.
Most of what we hear about in terms of medical research never comes to light because a) most of it is hype and b) it's a lot more complicated than any of us can believe. Most of it relies on peoples emotions of something successful coming from it so there is additional funding. No hype means no emotion. No emotion means no government grants. No government grants means no job for the researcher.
It wasn't too long ago that new thing was cold fusion. Too bad nobody else could duplicate it (even the lab that supposedly did it the first time).
Even the article states that everything but the brains regenerated. So, in the long run what's the results of this resarch if used on people? Well, we'd have a bunch of people with brains that have turned to Jello, but the bodies of 20yr olds. But hey, at least they'd all have two arms, two legs, a heart and lungs.
If the mouse loses it's heart, it will regenerate? I'd like to know just how quickly this process takes place...
or else!
So it really is just a flesh wound then, eh?
Remove the body, inject with hormones, inject with regeneration cells... 2 months later a change of sex has occured.. Spooky! but would you? could be cool for a while!
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
As soon as they get this into humans, my side business of stealing kidney's and selling them on the blak market is going to go strait down the drain.
Trying to be different, just like everyone else.
Have you heard the story of Darth Mausesis?
He was so powerful in the dark side of the Force that he could create life! But one night his pupil Darth Serious shot him in the head and he died.
That glorious combination of bad eyesight and an idle mind caused me to immediately think - self-powered computer mouse! Create a laser mouse that retains it's ball to generate the electricity to run the thing.
Sometimes the fun of being a software geek is that you get to enjoy thinking about things like this, and not have a care in the world about whether it would actually work....
> Too bad nobody else could duplicate (cold fusion)
According to the latest issue of 'Make' magazine, there is a triving community of researchers who have succeeded, and are attempting to hone the process (mostly trying to figure out the magic ratio between palladium doping, heavy water, pressure and heat measurement). Pick up the latest issue; 'Make' is like 'Wired' done by Heathkit.
So many comments about transgendering.... pffft I say...
Just imagine all the applications for real people! Like real people in the Military and who engage in dangerous recreational activites and such... And all the new sporting events...
Like... Extreme-Self-Mutilation and How-much-can-I-lose-without-dying!
Any injury serious enough to need repaired using this Mutant Healing Factor(tm) is likely to prove fatal (because it limits food gathering) before it heals. Better to ask why it's not been seen in bigger animals with slower metabolisms. Consider that crodilians don't regenerate lost limbs but can survive severe trauma. If you had to pick one ability, the latter would be more useful, as it's a prerequisite for the former.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I mean...if they can just grow it back and all...
I can't wait until my Boss gets this.
As my old high-school physics teacher used to say, the Princes of Serendip paid that lab a visit. Luck got the ball rolling, but hard work made it into something with potential. It took an observant, inquiring mind to note that the ear holes were closing, and to choose to investigate it further. Fortune favors the prepared mind, especially in science.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
a robot body... with the strength of 5 gorillas?
...because Plutonians are teh suck
These mice have actually been around for awhile, not sure why the Australlian newspaper decided to mention them again... From jaxmice: Strain Description The MRL/MpJ mice are large but docile to the point that males rarely fight. MRL/MpJ mice, bred as a control for MRL/MpJ-Faslpr, also exhibit autoimmune disorders but symptoms are manifested much later in life compared to those the MRL/MpJ-Faslpr mice. Starting at about three months of age, levels of circulating immune complexes rise greatly in the MRL-Faslpr mouse but not in the wildtype control, MRL/MpJ. Also beginning at 3 months Faslpr mice exhibit very severe poliferative glomerulonephritis, whereas in the MRL/MpJ controls usually only mild glomerular lesions are detected. The MRL/MpJ lymphoproliferation wildtype females die at 73 weeks of age and males at 93 weeks. This compares to a lifespan of 17 weeks in the female and 22 weeks for males in the mouse homozygous for Faslpr. See MRL/MpJ-Faslpr (Stock No. 000485) for additional information. As a strain developed as the control for MRL/MpJ-Faslpr, MRL/MpJ mice are useful in the study of their comparable defects and diseases. MRL/MpJ, and one of its ancestral strains LG/J, display heightened wound healing relative to a panel of other inbred strains. At 4 weeks post-injury, 2mm ear punch wounds healed to 0-0.4mm in MRL/MpJ mice but were still 1.2-1.6mm in C57BL/6 mice. At 15 da ys post-injury C57BL/6 showed a maximal closure of 30% reduction in ear hole size while MRL showed 85% reduction. The process of healing in MRL/MpJ mice was faster, more complete, showed increased swelling, angiogenesis, fibroblast migration, extracellular matrix deposition, and decreased scarring and fibrosis. Additionally, hair follicles and accompanying sebaceous glands were regenerated to a much greater degree. The other ancestral strains of MRL/MpJ (C3H, C57BL/6, and AKR) do not display this enhanced healing. Bone marrow transplantation showed that the MRL/MpJ healing phenotype did not readily transfer with bone marrow and did remain in the irradiated host tissues. Enhanced healing of cardiac wounds has also been reported in MRL/MpJ mice. In this model a very high mitotic index (10-20%) was found, similar to that seen in non-mammalian tissue regeneration. Using F2 and backcross mapping of MRL/MpJ-Faslpr x B6 progeny McBrearty et al. identified wound healing QTLs: the Heal2 and Heal3 loci were identified on MRL/MpJ chromosome 13 in the region of D13Mit115 and D13Mit129 respectively; the Heal5 locus was identified on MRL/MpJ chromosome 12 in the region of D12Mit233; the Heal1 locus was identified on chromosome 8 of C57BL/6 in the region of D8Mit211; and a highly suggestive locus was found on MRL /MpJ chromosome 7 in the region of D7Mit220. In crosses between MRL/MpJ x SJL/J, Masinde et al. have identified 10 QTL for wound healing confirming and extending findings of McBrearty et al. Chromosomes 1, 3, 6, and 13 each had a single QTL with that on chromosome 13 being statistically suggestive but not significant, while chromosomes 4, 7, and 9 each had two statistically significant QTLs. (Clark et al., 1998; Leferovich et al., 2001; Kench et al., 1999; McBrearty et al., 1998; Masinde et al., 2001.)
Microarray analysis and SELDI ProteinChip analysis have identified multiple genes and proteins that have varied expression in the ear punch wounds of MRL/MpJ-Faslpr versus C57BL/6. The changes in expression patterns suggest that in MRL/MpJ mice there is less of an inflammatory response and an earlier transition into tissue repair than is seen in C57BL/6. (Li et al., 2000 and 2001.)
Blankenhorn et al. found that MRL/MpJ females heal faster and more completely than males. Some Heal QTL are sexually dimorphic with Heal2, 3, 7, 8, 10,and 11 having greater effect in males and Heal4, 5,and 9 having greater effect in females. Castration improves wound healing in MRL/MpJ males to nearly the degree seen in females, but ovariectomy does not improve the degree of healing seen in MRL/MpJ females. (Blankenhorn et al., 2003)
Relative to B10.D2
I have an eye that is severely damaged. I'd love to "heal" it through this kind of therapy.
Think of the possibilites for people with spinal injuries or people who have lost limbs in accidents!
If only superman was alive...
What kind of sick fuck "gets" to cut off the arms, legs lungs, you name it of the poor mouse?
Hrrm... I usually just sign my name.
I have talked to her at length about her work and it is utterly fascinating. She showed me a picture of a mouse, who through some tweaking, grew a full-sized ear on his back. Amazing. I believe her lab is only a few years away from having something ready for humans. She is reluctant to put any sort of timetable on it, and i can't say i blame her, but she knows she is on to something.
In addition to her work, she also makes a very good Florentine omelet. I enjoyed it, anyway...
It's amazing what lengths these Intelligent Design advocates will go to in order to prove their point. Give it up already. It isn't belie-
oh. umm...
...I would love a few extra (functional) fingers! It would help my Gaspard de la Nuit!
Best Buy can have you arrested
Australian scientists didn't do shit.
He's fair dinkum, and me out of mod points.
And when cells from the test mouse are injected into ordinary mice, they too
acquire the ability to regenerate, the US-based researchers say.
He's on his new book tour (Make Love: The Bruce Cambell Way) kickin' ass and signing autographs
Don't ya hate it when the correct spelling of your favorite screen name is taken?
Am I the only person who has thought that this could mean more and more years of life for senile people? The only organ that doesn't get repaired is the brain - so if it goes, you're still stuck in a healthy, regenerating body. Talk about a nightmare.
Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, which is why engineers sometimes smell really bad.
Actually it appears that the Australians were the first to file... Poor New York Times just missed it. g
Zombie dogs, zombie chimps, and now zombie mice...
I suppose rabits are next? Then real chimps and real dogs then real people?
I think I'll just stay at the winchester...
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
...as a retro-virus and we get Resident Evil.
"Aim for the head!"
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Take that, Lorena Bobbit!
Silly moderators. They can't see the original mispelling of "Australiam" so they think my post is off-topic.
Burn, karma, burn!
Infuriate left and right
The experimental animals are unique among mammals in their ability to regrow their heart, toes, joints and tail.
And when cells from the test mouse are injected into ordinary mice, they too acquire the ability to regenerate, the US-based researchers say.
Hmmmm... So, a regenerating mammal can contribute cells (contained in the blood, maybe?) to another mammal and transform it into a regenerator? Sounds awfully familiar...
But Kurt Conners and Logan, when asked to comment on this discovery, both replied with "Big deal".
Paul Lenhart writes words!
I believe Umbrella Corp has prior art. In which case good luck getting a patent U of Penn. Then again, I don't think the mice have started eating eachother's brains yet, so that might make the patent unique enough...
Lanik Muller, of the planet Treason.
w00t
That's sort of what I was thinking -- regenerative zombie dogs would make one hell of an army.
You ignorant fool. This behavior is by Intelligent Design. One day soon, when the sun has warmed the costal rocks and the moist air carries the scent of lilac, our new regenerating, non scar-tissue forming reptile overlords will scramble across the sands and we will welcome them.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
>I think I'd find it extremely valuable for myself.
I agree. I can see it now. OK OK. You can cut my hand off. But you have to buy the next round.
Repeat next week.
Now if they could only figure out what to do with that extreme pain issue.
TODO create witty sig.
They essentially give Depo-Provera (a time-release hormonal contraceptive injection) to certain sex offenders to kill their libidos. Ask Alan Turing how well he did when they put him on estrogen to make him less gay.
To simplify tremendously---male hormones make you aggressive, hairy and horny. Female hormones make you passive and depressed. Also, they give you tits and painful joints.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Stop talking nonsense. Medical studies DO NOT attempt to *prove* anything is safe in humans. They try to *show* something has an acceptable level of risk in humans.
There is a HUGE difference between the two (like between ID and Science, for example).
A: Baseball fans.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
What happened to the new mice? Are they now clones of the original, with cells completely replaced by the more vigorous MLR-strain cells?
Are the regenerated limbs those of the injured mice or composed entirely of MLR-strain tissue?
How would injecting one organism with cells of another (of the same species) grant it new abilities? Do our cells learn from each other? If I get spiderman's blood, do I get his abilities?
Before this becomes widespread and the market crashes!
when these mice try to take over, the only way to kill them will be to shoot them in the head.
BRE
"Dude check me out. I'm like a little otter. A SEXY little otter"
Honestly, surfing at 4 and still nearly every post is brain dead, except the ones noting that the researcher is in the U.S., not Australia.
However it is at he University of Pennsylvania (U Penn), which I believe is a different school from Penn State which one person posted.
Google: Ellen Heber-Katz Wistar
You will note that a genome screen was conducted at some point in time finding genes on 5 different chromosomes involved in wound healing and regeneration. The regeneration takes place by a mass of cells forming at the wound site that can form into many different tissue types, i.e. like stem cells. Indeed it seems (from a cursory scan of a few links) that stem cells injected into other mice also work. And this facility can be inherited.
There is related research going on in different areas including observation of self-healing optical nerves, heart muscle, and even spinal cord once the scar tissue and scarring agents if that's what they are saying, are cleared away.
It is being reported at a conference in a week but already Nature and other publications seem to be involved at least in the past. Wistar is famous for vaccine development too.
If someone with real knowledge in the field could pop in now I'd sure appreciate it.
I can say one more thing. Humans can regenerate to a very limited extent already. I know because my mother chopped off the tip of her finger in a folding chair (shiver) when she was little. The tip grew back with the nail, though I'm not sure if a joint actually grew back the way these mice did.
The point is scientists never believed regeneration was possible even with such evidence, then views turned around, and now we have finally gotten to this amazing milestone. It is not an instantaneous thing. There is a paper cited about heart regeneration in the MRL mouse in 2002. They found the "healer" mouse in 1998. But it seems a milestone has obviously been met and it sounds like things are going to accelerate if more people can start working on the gene functions and biochemistry involved.
Heber Katz' talk
will be given on Sept. 7 at Queens' College in Cambridge, England. The whole conference sounds very interesting, it would be nice if someone with a brain and some training could report on it to slashdot.
John Wayne Bobbitt called, and he'd like the contact information for the scientists in this article.
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
...for John Wayne Bobbit.
Do they look mean?
Do they have long claws?
Watch your ass, researchers.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Ok, I don't usually post much, but this issue and the comments posted over the past several pages have blown me away. When does it become apparent to scientist that maybe we shouldn't be trying to do these things? The population growth in industrialized nations had finally come to a point where the death rate and birth rate had become balanced. Population growth here in the US will grow only because of its immigration policy. When we come across discoveries such as this, people (you, me and the rest of the people on this planet) need to seriously consider the affect this will have on the planet. We already pollute our air and oceans to points where there are days that we can't go outside for fresh air or take a dip in the ocean because the pollutants are so great that we would get sick. My point is, we need to consider these changes and slow down. There's no need to stop researching and learning, hell that's what makes us human. But we MUST begin to consider the rate in which society evolves and how science pushes the envelope. Hell, most people don't give a crap about their own neighbor anymore and we want these people to live even longer? Until society advances, the medical break through such as these should be considered before they are pushed through. I'm sorry Larry Ellison, but humans were not meant to live forever...
...we need to learn how to build a better mousetrap!
mammoth ...I thought you said mouse?
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
Peter Schultz at the Scripps Institute had done similar work before; he had assembled "libraries" of mice with various genetic mutations, to see their effects on entire living systems. On one of the mice, he found that it could regenerated the tissue in its ear when they punched holes in them. I don't know whether they investigated that strain any further, or as drastically as these scientists had, but he did come up with a mouse line that did this.
Such irE
Whenever the topic of immortality comes up, everyone is quick to point out the problem of overpopulation. However, that's not the *only* problem.
;) Maybe if I stay open-minded I can have an excuse not to for a while, though...
It will also stifle innovation, for example.
I had a physics teacher in high school who told us that there are physicist alive today who do not believe some of the well-supported modern theories, and it's a problem, but they're old and we'll just have to wait until their die.
Unless people become more flexible in their views, immortality just won't work for a developing civilisation, even if you enforce sterility.
NOTE: No, I don't want to die either
Forget using this on humans - think about getting this into production with animals. Imagine having a farm where you don't kill the cows for beef, you just keep lopping the legs off after they've grown back. Perhaps with enough genetic engineering, animals could be convinced to grow great slabs of useless muscle tissue, which could be 'harvested' when the time is right.
I could also imagine the barricades and machine-gun emplacements that would be needed to keep the PETA activists out.
... you get Douglas Adams to write Doctor Who.
Then why the hell did I quit smoking???
Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed "nucular" accelerator on his back.
Sig changed for readability by G.W.
Gee... What do you want to do today, Brain?
Well, I'm not sure, Pinky. There was really only one thing on the list, and now that that's done, I got nothing.
People always worry that death and disease are good checks on the population and that eliminating them will cause rampant overpopulation and malthusian collapse. It's always turned out to be false.
They worried about it with the development of vaccines. They worried about it with improved birthing processes - before 1850 a woman could reasonably expect to have half of her 5-6 children die in childbirth or childhood. Allow them all to live, and the population explodes, right?
Except that you found people just had fewer babies instead, and because of the higher standard of living and less need to spend effort on just surviving - more time for productive work - the economy grew to support the new population just fine.
First-world countries, with their better medicine, higher standards of living, and longer lifespans, invariably have drastically lower population growth rates than third-world countries.
This problem solves itself.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
If regeneration occured a-la-Xmen wolverine-style, yes. But I'm guessing that the regeneration, particularly of large organs, is still a process that takes time. In this case it could be used to help wounded soldiers recover, but not more so than anyone else with a major wound.
... where Duncan McCloud's genes came from. But still, what was the prize??
Oh no! Now we will have regenerating trolls in real life as well! ..
I'm training a little dog so it will eat them for me. Anyone got a tripe ration?
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I'm curious as to what would happen to people who have had surgery to remove organs or have existing scar tissue from other injuries? If an injury has already healed, does it not regenerate? I'd be curious to know if they injected the cells into mice with healed injuries and what were the results. If someone has been missing a gall bladder or a breast for ten years, I can't see it growing back unless another surgery is performed to remove the healed areas.
Abstinence is a government conspiracy. www.SafeSexZone.co
I wonder how this would affect healing of damaged discs? From my reading (limited, i.e. one WWW site, that, come to think of it, could be nothing but quackery) on the subject, it seems that cells internal to the discs only grow properly when under more than 1 atmosphere of pressure, i.e. when compressed by the body's weight.
In the event of a rupture, and subsequent reduction in pressure, those cells don't grow properly, and therefore complete healing of ruptures is basically impossible.
-klode
Yes, yes, wouldn't it be horrible if all those people with reduced abilities or special needs suddenly had much great potential to be productive, or suddenly didn't need expensive support systems to just live their lives.
The applications are mind-boggling. Of course the amputees are the most obvious beneficiaries. But one of the mice regrew optic nerves, that means quadrapeligics, blind deaf. Maybe people with MS, diabetes, various other degenerative and chronic diseases that pour resources into drug manufacturing companies.
I'm only focusing on the money/resources aspect because it is the most concrete, and because that investment could be spent on making the planet more livable, or reducing the impact of humans on the environment. One could also make a pretty good arguement that curing a fellow man is the right thing to do in a moral sense, but that isn't my point. I'm saying that worrying about the environment is a luxury that many people who are just trying to survive and live their lives don't have, and if you raise their qualitiy of life, they may be able to start thinking about the long term.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
He gave an old woman the ability to regrow her kidney in Star Trek 4!!!!
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Brainless mammoths, presumably. Personally I don't know why they would bother to grow them anyway, it's already established scientific fact that they will escape their cages after power failure and start eating people. Those damned /. editors; clueless.
I can't wait until they apply this technology to cows.
Title says it all. The following publication is but one by the main researcher concerning regeneration in MRL mice: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=1529380 6&query_hl=2
I, for one, would not like to have my food regenerating while in my stomach. While one steak would keep me full for a long time, I would eventually explode when my steak regenerates back into the cow it came from. However, if it gets far enough in my digestive tract, that would be one hellacious bowel movement.
It's a very dark ride.
Wow, if we can regenerate organs then long distance space travel is much more feasable since people's bodies would repair much faster from solar flares,etc. All that would need to be shielded would be people's brains, they could wear lead lined helmets, etc.
Mammoth, indeed.
+++ATH0
Of course, vampires who live forever make sure their numbers are small so they don't overpopulate themselves and deplete their entire food supply (humans). Also, vampires control their numbers often by killing other vampires. The same thing could be said of human beings in the future when it comes to the concept of immortality. Fortunately for humanity there seems to be a problem of rebuilding a dying brain, so at least people won't be living 1000 years or something ridiculous like that. But don't think there does not exist an elite class of people in the world who would kill off 99% of the rest of the world, just so they would be able to live forever with all the resources they would ever need to live an eternal life of decadence and hedonism.
but rather, the ability to avoid the loss in the first place.
I acknowledge that you have a fair point. There have been many times in history when a new idea wasn't accepted until the people that held the old idea died. However I think there are plenty of counter-examples of people who never stop learning and who would only get more productive if they lived another 50 years. Imagine what Stephen Hawking might accomplish if he could walk and talk. There are not many people left who know what it was like to live through the Great Depression here in the US, what wisdom has been lost there?
On a personal note, I work in high-tech, I'm 35 and most of the people I work with are younger than 40, and there are very few older than 50. However the most exciting person I've worked with was in his late 60s. He had built vacuum-tube radios, and gone on through transistors and then silicon. He has worked in digital and analog from kilohertz to gigahertz. I don't know how many patents he had written, I think he lost count. It seemed like there wasn't any problem that he hadn't seen before in some form and solved. He never stops teaching and it is dramatic to watch how quickley a new engineer right out of college would become a really good engineer just from working with Phil. Two years with Phil was worth 12 years of normal experience. Keeping that king of knowledge and experience around would be a benefit to society.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
First of all, feeding the dog is not a good way to get it to eat the corpse -- it wouldn't be hungry!
Also, you'd be better off finding a tinning kit, if you're up to eating tins of homemade rock troll.
I aplogize for the typo. That should have read "much greater productivity" not "much great." And yes, I'm trying to make a very narrow (or shallow if you prefer) point. A person who can hear and see can communicate easier than a person who can't. A person with full mobility can get to work easier and faster than a person with reduced mobility. A person without diabetes doesn't spend time and money monitoring and managing their blood-sugar. We'd all be better off if we could cure these things instead of treating them, or managing them, or working-around them.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
This is great. If this same process can ever be replicated in humans then aging could be almost completely stopped. I suppose you could compare this to "Wolverine" from the X-men, though not as fast a regeneration. Im sure war veterans would love to here of this, though getting the same thing to work for humans might take longer than they have to live.
If we could/can regrow appendages...
:)
then hair should be NOTHING!!!
So long "Hair Club for Men" and all that LOT!!! Just a bunch of "witch doctors" if you ask me...
~GO
PS... before I clicked 'Submit' I thought of something else...
THIS technology would be the downfall of the "Plastic" Surgery industry as well (and I MEAN industry).
Could you imagine? Growing bigger boobs, lips, 'schwantzes' would be non-surgical...
The technology mentioned in the article doesn't "directly" apply to this 'PS', but it could lead in that direction.
he he...
Here honey just take this pill I would like you to have bigger breasts... (few days to weeks later)... Honey your breast are HUGE!!!
Of course the other obvious one pertains to male anatomy as well. >:}
Where is this published? I would like to read the actual article before commenting.
There used to be a store on UPenn's campus that sold T-shirts which had the school seal and the words NOT PENN STATE in big letters above it.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA August 14, 2001 | vol. 98 | no. 17 | 9830-9835 http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/98/17/9830 It seems to cover everything mentioned in the "Australian" article.
Yes! Finally we can satisfy humanity's desire for mouse legs without continually driving these poor creatures to extinction!
Isn't this the theory behind all of the "Night of the Living Dead" movies?
Whoa. Cool stuff! Might be a bad idea to give to anyone with a predisposition for cancer, though - I would think it would accelerate the growth of any tumour. You *could* just hope that if you do get a tumor it'll be somwhere amputatable and that you can then regrow the tissue, but there's only so much tissue you can cut out before even regeneration becomes stupid (Think "Marie Antoinette"). More so, if you were to grow back, say, an entire leg; that's a lot of growth to oversee, and it'd be happening faster (I'm guessing, unless you want to spend 10 years regrowing your leg) than at the carefully overseen and controlled rate at which we normally grow. I wonder what the chances of a defect forming in the new tissue are...
Defenestrate: Literally, "to throw out of a window".
The last country that pushed human experimentation, quit doing so in 1945.
Not quite. Google for "Tuskegee experiment". This one (not treating poor black men for syphilis in order to study the course of the disease) was funded by the US government from 1932 to 1972.
It's not an isolated case, either. And the US government is hardly the only government to support studies of this nature.
In another few decades, we'll probably be reading about human experiments that were going on in 2005.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Just a thought!
-- In Soviet Russia, radio listens to YOU!
Actually, nobody pissed on my cornflakes, i simply pointed out the many blatant mistakes from the submitter. I was actually making a joke but ah well mods as always go for the flamebait or troll option.
Jonathanjk.com
Will they be able to make a penis grow BIGGER? Cuz there are two things a guy can't have too much of: penis and money.
"So, exactly how is human intellect not a result of evolution?"
:-D
4 59401 a reply I've made down thread.
Yeah. I didn't say it wasn't.
Further:
"And do you really think a hundred years or so of "societal support structures" is going to have a lasting effect on the gene pool?"
Yes, I do. Because when I said that, I wasn't referring to just "a hundred years". Our societal support structures evolved from the social groups of lower primates. The necessity to keep track of the large amount of social-group interactions (social accounting) is a likely reason our brains are just so big. Additionally, our sense of aesthetics in pair-bonding is ALSO evolved over much larger periods of time. I'm saying that these more cerebral selectors are much bigger factors to today's Man compared to how healthy our babies are, how healthy our peers are, how fast we can run, how long we can go without food, how long our individual immune systems can fight off death, etc.
Finally, regarding our abilities to stave of death: I think 2 billion or so humans living past 60 years is pretty good evidence to the contrary considering we used to mature by 11 and die by 30. But again, I'm looking beyond "a hundred years or so".
Possibly relevant: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=160745&cid=13
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
"It can be done, after a fasion. The complex structures that are removed can't be replaced, but with a 12-18 months of sustained effort the skin folds can be replicated."
I'm sure the average Slashdotter would have no problem with that "12-18 months of sustained effort"... As long as their carpal tunnel didn't act up.
Freedom: "I won't!"
is there any "enhance your penis" potential in this exciting new technology?
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
...somebody tell John Bobbit
This sig is false.
Just, wow.
Why, exactly, shouldn't researchers be allowed to conduct experiments on human volunteers?
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Rocking. Now we can start on the regenerating jihad ninja mouse.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
People will die in mass over population if the government give us this technology.
We are already achieving Zero Population Growth in many developed countries. In fact, birth rate is below replacement rate in some.
The countries with declining birth rates will be in crisis in a few years when there literally won't be enough able-bodied (young) people to take care of the aging (retired) population.
This technology isn't coming a minute too soon! We need to keep the older folks (us) strong and healthy or we're going to end up with over-worked young people and/or abandoned (or even euthenized) old people (that's us).
Also, many people choose to have children now rather than later because "the clock is ticking". Many career-minded people end up trying to concieve in their 30s and 40s. Some succeed, some fail, others use extreme measures.
We got married at 34 and 30, and we started our family right away. If this technology had been available, we would have waited a few years, gotten some maturity under our belts, and gotten some cash in our bank accounts. Who knows how long we would have put it off.
The future is Logan's Run (no old people) without having to kill the old folks (that's us).
You would have to define for me what you mean by a volunteer before I could answer your question.
Are you talking about somebody who knows all the risks associated with the experiment, they aren't receiving compensation (nor are their next of kin if it goes wrong), they have a full understanding that they are subjecting themselves to procedures that most likely have no chance of working and on and on?
If the volunteer doesn't meet the above and similar requirements, then they aren't a volunteer, but only a victim.
I recall something about electrical stimulous applied to stumps of limbs removed. This was sometime ago in the past 60 years. The electrical stimulous caused regeneration of said missing limb..
This could get fairly interesting.
2 7/1923259&tid=191&tid=14
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/
Woof! EEEK! BRAINS!
Just think if they made mice with all these abilities. They'd some kind of race of atomic super-mice! I guess all that time as playthings of science had some beneficial effect.
So, these atomic supermice could go in one of three directions: "Here I come to save the day!," "Same thing we do every night...," or "At last we shall have our revenge!"
I know which one I'm betting on. Anybody else scared?
And this last paragraph is so Slashdot will stop complaining about characters-per-line. I give you this summary of the excellent book, The Mouse that Roared:
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
Rengeneration-Check Refining Adanantium-Inprogress... Mutant Genes my fury blue Asscot. This makes alot Science Fiction seem not too far off... Like downing a pill and after a bit regrowing an important organ like the kidney(as noted above and shown in Star Trek 6: The Voyage Home). Just be on the lookout for asian women with silverly eyes and really long nails.
The article mentions upgregulation of matrix metalloproteinases. Last I heard, those were being blamed for tumors being able to invade nearby tissue.
You have quite an imagination if you think there is any pity in this "healthy people are more productive" argument.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Looks like we'll need bigger mousetraps.
I'm pretty sure I remember seeing Elizabeth Shue doing it. Ahh, those boots...
Vista:XPSP2::ME:98SE
Comment removed based on user account deletion
IF this is for real.
Bigger then Insulin.
If it IS - they'll get the Nobel Prize and the committee will retire it. How can you top this?
The blind will see and the lame will walk.
What do you want?
On second thought, there's still cancer, aids, a whole bunch of powerful viral and bacterial diseases and brain damage to solve yet.
But still, this is the shit! (That's a technical term)
Mumia Abu-Jamal is *laughably guilty*. Check the evidence.
Doh! It's three periods for an elipsis, people, not two, not four. And if placing a word after it to continue the same sentence, don't add a space. Only add a space (two, actually) if it ends a sentence before beginning the next. ... good enough." (There were several sentences of invective including a negation in that ellipsis, but if it's good enough for newspaper reporters to warp statements with strategic placement of ellipses, it's good enough for me.)
And properly, an ellipsis should only be used to indicate missing words in a quotation, not as a dramatic pause, but to quote my English teacher, "That's
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.