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 body piercing people are going to hate this.
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.
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?
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.
... 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...
(Presuming governments try and withhold the technology).
People will die in mass over population if the government give us this technology.
People will die in riots if the government give us the technology but try to control over population with laws controling birth rights
It at time like this I wish I hadn't read Kim Stanley Robinson's 'Red Mars' series.
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
At first glance I would agree with you. However, I can envision an extreme (EXTREME!) surgery where the patiant was bombarded with hormones from the opposite sex, then had their genitals totally removed, with the hopes that genitals from the opposite sex would grow back naturally. Pretty freakin' crazy eh? Of course if you cut your lip during the healing process you may end up looking like this.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
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.
Finally, I small hope for the Republicans...