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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. :)"
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!
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?
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
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.
Thats an interesting idea. How much would hormone activity affect what grows back? Hormones are critical when the organs initiall develop after all, it is plausible that they could affect the regeneration of humans who have that ability, of course depending on exactly how the regeneration works.
It depends what you mean by "heal". Eg, if you get your ear pierced the open wound will "heal" (close the wound) over the course of a few months to leave a neat circular hole through your ear, with skin on the inside.
If you then take out the piercing, the hole will generally slowly close up, until it's eventually absorbed back into your body and disappears.
So yes, the wound does "heal" (in the sense of "closing the hole") when you take the piercing out (sometimes earlier, like eyebrow piercings which frequently grow out even with the jewellery left in).
However, the actual open wound (in the sense of a hole into your body, not all the way through it) generally heals within a few days or months (depending what you get pierced) of first getting it done.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself