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Researchers Identify Gene Involved in Regeneration
v1x writes "Researchers at the University of Utah School of Medicine have discovered that when a gene called smedwi-2 is silenced in the adult stem cells of planarians, the quarter-inch long worm is unable to carry out a biological process that has mystified scientists for centuries, regeneration."
Automatically regenerating veal.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
In humans we call this cancer.
I will bet john bobbit will be happy when this is finally perfected on humans ;-)
You're missing the point... Cut and paste the first paragraph, then wait. After a few hours, you'll have the whole article here where we can read it.
When I cut off my head, I'll have a clone!
It's okay, I guess. Quad-damage is better.
So that's one of the crucial Time Lord genes....
You don't realize how true your words can actually turn out to be!! The most fascinating point of the research, which the submitter omitted completely, is the fact that a homologous gene is present in the Human genome!!
Now, just think of the implications of this research if we can somehow learn how this gene is regulated - no more amputations, no more diabetes type 1, no more any disease where a lost body part is gone forever!
Amazing, isn't it? I love to dream, but the reality may not turn out to be that ideal...but surely something amazing is going to result from these efforts by the Utah scientists.
... when a gene called smedwi-2 is silenced in the adult stem cells of planarians ...
That doesn't mean the gene has anything to do with it's regeneration.
If you silenced a gene in me that allowed me to produce red blood cells would you then say you had found the gene responsible for me being able to respirate (live)?
I'm wondering if this may have anything that could be useful in recovery following wounding. Obviously there is already some way for cells to regenerate to some degree after damage. Maybe you could do something like applying a spray of smedwi-2 to either speed up the process, or allow the body to recover from more serious damage.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
Re: worm: afaik the remaining part of the worm (ar we talking lumbricus terrestris?)needs to have a bit or the whole 'ring' structure. So only one part can regenerate.
Re: complex animal: all these scientists found is how to BREAK the mechanism. Like when I was 10, i could take a part out of the alarm clock (but then it failed completely). Until now most GMO's are single gene expressions. (double if you count in the antibiotic resistance, but no things cooperating)
looks like the next generation of the bilderberg group/illuminati/freemasons/real underground rulers of earth - will be immortal, thus not needing to pass down the lineage of the family line. maybe the great dark lord will end up like krang from the turtles
smedwi-2 (not quite a catchy name is it?) is in the line of the next aging inhibition, youth sustenance attempts that humanity is so fond of. I wonder what happend to the Telomerase craze of the past. So when genetic modification drugs (probably virii) are going to make a huge entry into the pharma market, we'll be seeing the likes of this one the list. On the positive side, perhaps degenerative diseases like Parkinsons' and like geriatric disorders do have stronger solutions coming up.
No Greater Friend, No Greater Enemy! (Lucius Cornelius Sulla)
...they would find the gene for quad damage too.
Hey! That's my sig you're smoking there!
This article comes close to saying that we'll have this in humans soon, probably to keep you interested. Let me set this straight, you won't be able to get a cool regeneration ability.
a. we don't know how this would work with the rest of the human genome
b. we have rules against testing a
c. the technology isn't complete for changing a humans dna
d. we have rules blocking a lot of research into c
e. It would be cool, so it's not going to be publicly available.
On the other hand, this is interesting research, and could help a lot in several fields of medicine, though i believe it would be mainly transplant medicine, and anything usable is still 10-20 years into the future. So get your hopes up for your kids, but realize this, you will die the same way as your grandparents.
Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
Dude - worms in Australia are 15 feet long, with massive, sharp, pointy teeth, dripping venom. No-one in Australia has lived long enough to see what happes when you cut one in half :)
I'm visually handicapped, not enough so that I can't see a large computer monitors, and I know others who are visually and physically handicapped in some way.
I can tell you that they would all welcome a new technology that would allow people who have lost limbs to grow them back or regenerate eyes so they could see. You underestimate the the lobbying powers of Disabled Americans. We have a great deal of influence, almost as much as the AARP and the NRA, and they both have immense clout.
Congress can ignore some of us some of the time but they can't ignore all of us all the of the time. If its proven that limbs and organs can be regenerated by activating such a gene in the human genome then mark my words we'll make them make it legal.
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
thezorch@gmail.com
http://thezorch.googlepages.com/home
Planarians are NOT worms like earthworms, they're more related to a liver fluke I'd guess. And you can press one through a screen and many of the parts will survive to become worms. Also, they are trainable, you can teach them to always take a certain path at a fork, or train them to go to the side lit by a certain type of light(red or green) It just takes hundreds of trys to do it right everytime. Want REALLY weird - get this - If you juice and inject a trained worm into an untrained worm, it can learn in only a couple dozen trials to do it right everytime.
It regenerated.
Thing is, even if you can regenerate entire limbs I wonder whether they'll match the rest of the body. My guess is it won't for quite some time (after they figure out basic regeneration)
;) ).
Because if the regeneration ends up like lizards and amphibians (or even crustaceans), then it won't. They typically end up with a slightly smaller appendage, or sometimes even _two_. e.g. if a lizard's tail gets notched instead of totally chopped off, sometimes it ends up with two tails.
Having a nonmatching limb or extra limbs might be just as undesirable as having a missing limb.
A "freaky" limb could be perceived as "bad genes", whereas having a missing limb might not be (then again it could be a sign of genes for stupidity/carelessness though
Maybe the really rich would be able to go about their lives while getting a regen-lab to keep growing replacement limbs/organs for them under controlled conditions till they get one that matches well enough. But the poor will end up with mismatched stuff or resorting to prosthetics...
Hmm, add some rogue neurons growing in a replacement limb and you might end up with a nice B grade movie...
"...but surely something amazing is going to result from these efforts by the Utah scientists." ....yea...ASSUMING that the crazy right wing Utah gov. doesnt step in and stop them...
We seldom regret saying too little but often regret saying too much.
Some theories are proposing that memories are patterns of activity in the brain themselves, not something stored in a location persay. Perhaps something chemical from the learned worms enables the new worms to "lock on" to the correct pattern of behavior more quickly - with VERY simple learning like this, chemical messengers may play a more prominent role.
Hopes are high, I agree. But we have next to no idea why this gene is needed for regeneration. For all we know, it could be a minor but crucial role. For example, perhaps this gene merely acts as a signal, telling cells "regenerate now!", whereas the highly complex machinery that actually carries out regeneration is contained in some other genes. Note that if this were true, the results of the experiments would be the same. Further research is needed.
The effect you mentioned was due to an experimental error.
Specifically, the maze used to train the worms were not cleaned and chemical trails were left allowing faster training of untrained worms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_RNA
I shouldn't have cut that finger off before I finished reading... :)
Security is but an illusion of the mind
~M45T3R S4D0W8~
Regeneration is a very complex process and its behavior is not governed by a single gene or protein expression, as it involves a variety of very complex mechanics that are not fully understood. While I'm sure this gene is responsible for part of the regenerative process in worms, simply eliminating one gene and breaking something doesn't mean this is going to translate into a human response. Regeneration research has been going on for many years, and it has produced limited results in rats as some of the mechanics responsible have been found. Further, stem cells don't play the only role in regeneration in more complex animals similar to mammals like the newt; the first step of regeneration is muscle cells dedifferentiating and then differentiating into a new replacement cell type. There are multiple proteins (and multiple genes) involved with this step alone, and it's one of many.
nonsense?
Africa can certainly produce enough food to feed itself with modern sustainable farming. It's problems have been mostly civil strife and partly a global economic system that makes it financially ordained that cash-crop for sale be grown, rather than a nutritionally balanced range of crops.
The first of these problems wont be fixed by GM crops and the second would be better addressed by fixing the underlying problem rather than producing, say, rice rich in vitamin D (an incomplete solution).
The immediate downsides of GMO farming are twofold: Firstly, an enforced tithe to the patent holders annually, which cannot be escaped from or realistically negotiated for a fair price, seeing as GMO crops cannot be got rid of and cannot be obtained from a competitor. Secondly, an eggs in one-basket situation of genetic mono-culture... google for the Irish potato famine, sometime.
And thirdly (THREE downsides), an ethically fucked up situation in which people must pay for the right to work to feed themselves. Very medieval. You can be sure that African nations are not in a position to fairly negotiate with US corporations.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
My +2 Regeneration tunic can be a reality!
So what are the chances we will now have Self Regenerating, Near Immortal, Fearless Rats??? Just strap on some inexpensive lasers, and have Bose equip them for all-terrain duty.... Build an army, or replace the family guard dog... Hrmmm...
I believe this has been used on physically abnormal but genetically fine embryos and has effectively prevented babies being born with deformities - for example, when the hand was developing misformed, it was removed and a new one grew.
But as the original poster said, it has to be done very early on. It's still experimental, and I would guess that only a small percent of the world's population have access to the hi-res ultrasound scanners required to even see these potential deformities, let alone have access to the specialist surgical teams.
Sweet, now we can genetically engineer Wolverine. All we need now is for someone to discover adamantium.
A little while ago Wired had a story on a similar topic, in which a strain of mice was discovered which was able to regrow organs. From the Wired article (which has some neat pictures of regenerating mouse ears):
...
...
Mice discovered accidentally at the Wistar Institute in Pennsylvania have the seemingly miraculous ability to regenerate like a salamander, and even regrow vital organs.
Researchers systematically amputated digits and damaged various organs of the mice, including the heart, liver and brain, most of which grew back.
The results stunned scientists because if such regeneration is possible in this mammal, it might also be possible in humans.
The researchers also made a remarkable second discovery: When cells from the regenerative mice were injected into normal mice, the normal mice adopted the ability to regenerate. And when the special mice bred with normal mice, their offspring inherited souped-up regeneration capabilities.
Heber-Katz discovered the strain in 1998 accidentally while working with mice specially bred for studying autoimmune diseases.
She had pierced holes in the ears of the genetically altered mice to distinguish them from a control group, but they healed quickly with no scarring.
She and her colleagues wanted to find out what other parts of this strain of mice would grow back, so they snipped off the tip of a tail, severed a spinal cord, injured the optic nerve and damaged various internal organs.
The mice seem to exhibit regenerative capabilities similar to that of human fetuses in the first trimester, said Dr. Stephen Badylak, a surgery research professor and director of the Center for Pre-Clinical Tissue Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh's McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine.
"It offers us insight into a more fetal-like healing response, where scar tissue is minimal and regeneration is abundant," Badylak said. "It's a great model to examine healing mechanisms and use that information to see if we can stimulate the same thing to happen in people."
Heber-Katz said she will soon publish her results on digit regrowth in a peer-reviewed medical journal.