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Australian Science Makes the Regenerating Mouse

Posted by samzenpus on from the cats-beware dept.

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. :)"

7 of 762 comments (clear)

  1. Wrong countries by Zirjin · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  2. Re:finally by Patrik_AKA_RedX · · Score: 4, Informative

    Don't get your hopes up. Medical break throughs tend to take a quite long time before they reach a hospital near you. (think Duke4Ever timescales) Thing is that medical research requires so many experiments to prove it is really save for use on humans, before it is allowed to be used in hospitals.

  3. He's correct....US based by deft · · Score: 4, Informative

    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."

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    There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
  4. Oversights by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  5. Old news and not from Australia!?! by sidney · · Score: 4, Informative
    The Wistar Institute is in the US and the publication list on this topic at the lead researcher's page goes from 1998 to 2003.

    So what makes this new or Australian?

    Desquenne Clark, L., Clark, R., and Heber-Katz, E. 1998. A new model for mammalian wound repair and regeneration. Clin. Imm. and Immunopath. 88: 35-45.

    McBrearty, B.A., Desquenne-Clark, L., Zhang, X-M., Blankenhorn, E.P., and Heber-Katz, E. 1998. Genetic analysis of a mammalian wound healing trait. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 95: 11792 - 11797.

    Heber-Katz, E. 1999. The regenerating mouse ear. Seminars in Cell & Develop. Biol. 10:415-420.

    Samulewicz, SJ, Clark,L, Seitz,A., and E. Heber-Katz. 2002. Expression of Pref-1, A Delta-Like Protein, in Healing Mouse Ears. Wound Repair and Regeneration, 10: 215-221.

    Gourevich,D, Clark,L, Chen P, Seitz A, Samulewicz S, and E. Heber-Katz. 2003. Matrix Metalloproteinase Activity Correlates with Blastema Formation in the Regenerating MRL Ear Hole Model. Developmental Dynamics. 226; 377-387.

    Blankenhorn EP, Troutman S, Desquenne Clark L., Zhang X-M, and E. Heber-Katz. 2003. Sexually dimorphic genes regulate healing and regeneration in the MRL/MpJ mouse. Mammalian Genome, In press.

    Leferovich, J., Bedelbaeva, K., Samulewicz, S,, Xhang, X-M, Zwas, DR, Lankford, EB, and Heber-Katz, E. 2001. Heart regeneration in adult MRL mice. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 98: 9830-9835.

    Heber-Katz,E., Leferovich, J., and K. Bedelbaeva. 2002. Spontaneous heart regeneration in adult MRL mice after cryo-injury. Gene Therapy and Regulation. 1:399-408; Leferovich, JM and E. Heber-Katz. 2002. The Scarless Heart. Seminars in Cell and Developmental Biology. 13: 327-333.

    Seitz, A., Aglow, E., and E. Heber-Katz. 2002. Recovery from spinal cord injury: A new transection model in the C57BL/6 mouse. J. Neuroscience Research 67: 337:345.

    Seitz, A, Kragol, M, Aglow, E, Showe, L. and E. Heber-Katz. 2003. Apo-E expression after spinal cord injury in the mouse. J. Neuroscience Research. 71: 417-387.

  6. Re:amazing by Jonathan · · Score: 5, Informative

    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?

    In theory yes -- most birth defects have no genetic basis (that's why "thalidomide babies" have perfectly normal children themselves) -- it isn't the information in their DNA that is damaged but rather the fact that their cells were misassembled during development in the womb.

  7. Cancer rate increase? by spineboy · · Score: 4, Informative
    Certain cells seem to have a fixed number of divisions, before they are turned off(telomeres on the chromosomes, seem to shorthen a bit, after every cell division). Errors in this probably lead to cancer, and it's one of the theorised ways that the body prevents cancer, by limiting the number of cel divisions. Normal cells usually stop growing, when they arein contact with other cells - something to do with cell communication/contact inhibition. Cancer cells often lack this and thus do not get the mesg to stop.

    This will be very interesting to see what happens. growing a new kidney, or hand would be great, as long as it is safe.

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    ..........FULL STOP.