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. :)"
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.
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.
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.