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DARPA Sponsoring Limb Regeneration Research

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the regrow-the-ungrowable dept.

fragmentate writes "Wired News is reporting: 'In response to the hundreds of soldiers coming home from war with missing arms or legs, Darpa is spending millions of dollars to help scientists learn how people might one day regenerate their own limbs. Prosthetics are getting better all the time, but they will never be as good as the limbs we were born with. So two teams of scientists at 10 institutions across the country are competing to regrow the first mammalian limb ... The researchers' first milestone is to generate a blastema — a mass of cells able to develop into various organs or body parts — in a mammal.' Apparently this is a relatively new area of research, even Wikipedia's stub on blastemas is very terse."

38 of 221 comments (clear)

  1. Stub. by Wordsmith · · Score: 4, Funny

    Wikipedia's stub. I get it. Hah.

    1. Re:Stub. by Darkman,+Walkin+Dude · · Score: 4, Funny

      Jokes aside, if they can regenerate limbs, surely its just a hop skip and a jump to regenerate organs? If we can do that, immortality is just around the corner...

      --
      What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
    2. Re:Stub. by Stile+65 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      First of all, TFA says that one of the two teams of scientists working on this is basing their work on the MRL mouse, which can and does regenerate internal organs, including severed spinal cords.

      Second of all, this may increase lifespan, but would not provide immortality. Human cells stop reproducing after a certain number of reproductions. The cell chromosomes have end-cap like things called telomeres which are shortened with each mitotic cycle. When they get too short, the cell stops reproducing. This is to prevent too many mutations from accumulating after a while. Generally, if cells divide without shortening the telomeres, they're usually malignant tumor cells. So to get immortality, you'd have to augment the mitotic cycle to a) "spellcheck" the chromosome copying, and b) prevent the telomeres from being shortened.

      --
      I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
    3. Re:Stub. by Flavio · · Score: 2, Informative

      The chromosome copying is already spellchecked.

      Both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells have copy verification and repair machinery which drastically reduce replication errors.

    4. Re:Stub. by javilon · · Score: 4, Informative

      a) "spellcheck" the chromosome copying, and b) prevent the telomeres

      b) is easy, you can shut off telomerase for a while(http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerend er.fcgi?artid=14711&tools=bot)

      --


      When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
    5. Re:Stub. by rolfwind · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If they can regenerate organs, will they be able to regenerate the largest organ, skin? This would help burn victims immeasurably.

    6. Re:Stub. by izomiac · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Drastically reduce but not eliminate. IIRC mutations tend to occur once every 600,000 base pairs, so that would mean that replication is about 99.99983% accurate. After 100 divisions the genome of a cell would only be 99.983% accurate, so it'd have about 1 error every 500 base pairs. Given the size of most genes/proteins, that cell should have some serious problems or be cancerous. (I don't know the "maximum" number of divisions, it could be more or less, but you can see the problem.) Not to mention, mutation accumulation is just one part of aging. Now, if we could take our genome and add some parity base pairs and some redundancy checking proteins we might be able to address that problem. But that's far beyond our level of genetic engineering (AFAIK).

    7. Re:Stub. by RobinH · · Score: 2, Interesting

      As I understand it, the ability of cells in a human body to regenerate themselves (heal) diminishes over time due to "programming" in our genes. This causes aging, but is also a cancer fighting mechanism.

      If you could use a given adult's body to grow a blastema or whatever it is and then use it to grow a limb or organ, the cells would remember their "age" and would still not be as resilient as a child's organ or limb. Therefore, you could replace your heart at the age of 75 but it would still be a 75 year old's heart in some ways.

      If you could use a child's cells to create a blastema and then use that to create organs for an adult, then you're talking about real rejuvenation. Of course, you'd not be able to do this with a brain, so you're still going to eventually run out of neurons. At least you could live a better quality of live though.

      The best idea would be to combine this blastema thing with the ability to turn off the genes that cause aging, while finding a cure for cancer at the same time. Then I think we would be almost immortal. Just keep your brain from being damaged beyond repair.

      --
      "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
    8. Re:Stub. by brainburger · · Score: 2, Insightful

      hmmm - I bet it is possible to regenerate the body indefinitely, (eventually), but I am doubtful that this is possible with the mind. Even if the brain-tissue could be replaced, could a useful structure be preserved? How would a human mind cope with the increased memory requirements? - It would distort the psychology somewhat to have centuries or millennia of experience.
      Perhaps the brain could drop its oldest memories in favour of new ones, but would this seem like immortality to mind of that person?

    9. Re:Stub. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Actually, humans have an enzyme called telomerase that rebuilds telomers. You're right that telomers do wear down over time, but the solution may be much simpler than preventing telomer shortening, which, if I remember correctly, is sort of a side-effect of DNA replication.

    10. Re:Stub. by QuantumG · · Score: 2, Informative

      The actual engineering involved isn't that important. What's important is that researchers no longer consider aging to be just something we have to live with, and consider it their goal to increase the human lifespan. Note, this isn't all researchers. Many people still believe that humans should always grow old and die and to perform research into indefinitely extending human lifetimes is wrong.

      --
      How we know is more important than what we know.
    11. Re:Stub. by mrogers · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If a person lives for 1000 years and their personality continues to evolve, to what extent can the 1000-year-old individual be regarded as "the same person" as, say, the 30-year-old individual? Are you the same person you were 10 years ago, or 20? What would 1000 years of experience, combined with 1000 years of cultural, political and technological change, do to the human personality?

  2. Reminds me of The Forever War by bhunachchicken · · Score: 5, Interesting

    (WARNING - SPOILERS)

    When William Mandella lost his leg in an accident he was under the impression that he would simply be given an artificial one and would then be free to persue a semi-normal life. To his horror he discovers they'll simply grow him a new leg and chuck him right back in to active duty... :)

    --
    THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
    1. Re:Reminds me of The Forever War by nosredna · · Score: 3, Interesting

      New moderation ideas are a dime a dozen, but I have to throw one in for this...

      +1 Creepy but probably true

    2. Re:Reminds me of The Forever War by operagost · · Score: 2, Insightful

      FWIW, in the U.S. military you are given an honorable discharge on demand if wounded three times (three purple hearts), so even if something ridiculous like this happened you'd be sent home by the third severed limb :-P

      --

      Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
  3. Has no one seen the Spider-man cartoons by JoeyJoeJo · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Wasn't the Lizard created from a scientist who was trying to do this very thing?

  4. Re:Wikipedia by iggymanz · · Score: 2, Funny

    it's the spammers I fear: get your Penis Enlargement Blastima now!

  5. Don't underestimate prosthetics by Chandon+Seldon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Prosthetics are getting better all the time, but they will never be as good as the limbs we were born with.

    Why not? I see no good reason why competent engineering can't eventually beat a chunk of meat.

    It's not like we were intelligently designed... we evolved. Evolution will tend to produce good solutions to problems, but it will hardly ever produce the best possible solution. Once we get nerve-circuit interfaces down, we should have no problem outengineering most of the human body.

    --
    -- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
    1. Re:Don't underestimate prosthetics by Darkman,+Walkin+Dude · · Score: 4, Insightful

      we should have no problem outengineering most of the human body.

      Yes and then the batteries in your cyberleg run down and you have to haul the entire 40 kilo hunk of metal across town in the rain... on one leg. Besides that you are forgetting that the limbs aren't seperate components of the body; its all interlinked. Its no good having an arm able to flip over a truck, your torso would compact and tear itself apart if you didn't just rip the thing off, nerve circuits and all. The only real option for enhanced performance cybernetics would be a Ghost in the Shell effort, with full body replacement except for the brain. If you can manage that, without regular maintenance and some sort of 50 year power source, I'll admit you have a point.

      --
      What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
    2. Re:Don't underestimate prosthetics by Darkman,+Walkin+Dude · · Score: 4, Funny

      That's a bold statement of fact, considering even the most avid proponents of evolution refer to it as "theory".

      Not a great troll... poignant, with a hint of maple... but lacking in the body and depth that a really rich, warm troll should have... I'll have to give this one star, I'm afraid.

      --
      What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
    3. Re:Don't underestimate prosthetics by Conspiracy_Of_Doves · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Evolution is both theory and fact. Please learn the definition of the word 'theory'.

      --

      Technoli
    4. Re:Don't underestimate prosthetics by daeg · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Just because we may eventually out-tnature doesn't mean the thousands of injured soliders and civilians want part of their body replaced with robotics if they could have the option of a new, real limb.

      There is also no reason both areas of research can't operate simultaneously, nor anything that is restricting them from working coopoeratively.

    5. Re:Don't underestimate prosthetics by Chandon+Seldon · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Consider that cyberleg. We can build it to run off glucose in order to avoid it running out of batteries. We can easily give it the performance characteristics of an athlete - we know the human body can take that. It will never get out of shape. Assuming it has sufficient glucose (which is easy to introduce to your body, especially if you deal with the insulin thing right), it will never get tired.

      Now, that's no car-tossing cyberarm, but it's definately an improvement on the stock equipment. The downside is maintnence, but anyone who's paid too much attention to cyberpunk settings knows that - and that can be reduced with better engineering.

      --
      -- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
  6. Re:Wikipedia by nametaken · · Score: 2, Funny

    Funny, that was my thought, except I had a bit more optimistic expectation. I was hoping that it would get filled out in record time with quality info. :)

  7. Wikipedia's stub on blastemas is very terse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I think it would be more accurate to say Wikipedia's stub on blastemas is embryonic.

  8. can we grow some extra limbs in advance? by porky_pig_jr · · Score: 3, Funny

    so, say, if one hand is blown off, I still have a few more left, no need to rush to hospital. an extra head won't hurt either. (with a possibility of starring in Hitchhiker).

  9. Potential for other applications by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If they can give soldiers the ability to grow amputated limbs, any possibility this technology can be used to produce 100% real enlarged breasts? Forget silicone and saline implants, in ten years time we'll have women who can inject themselves with this serum and grow from a B-cup to DD. I imagine the government will find a way to outlaw that, too, just like they did for silicone "for the saftey of women".

    1. Re:Potential for other applications by kfg · · Score: 2, Funny

      If they can give soldiers the ability to grow amputated limbs, any possibility this technology can be used to produce 100% real enlarged breasts?

      Yes, but don't be surprised if people look at you funny -- or maybe that should be funnier.

      KFG

  10. I sense a disturbance in the Force by GungaDan · · Score: 3, Funny

    as if a million stumpfuckers suddenly cried out in protest.

    --
    Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
  11. One step closer... by QuantumFTL · · Score: 2, Funny

    This is one step closer to the invincible zombie army that the government is working on. Maybe it will help us defeat the robots in the future?

    Why yes, my hat ismade out of tin. How did you know?

  12. Millions ? by OpenSourced · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The two groups are sharing $7.6 million in grants for a year to find a way to give humans salamander-like abilities.

    Am I out of whack or it's $7.6m like peanuts for this kind of research? I'd guess any serious effort on that would need to be in the billions level, and that likely for many years.

    --
    Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
  13. How about some hair regeneration? by glrotate · · Score: 5, Funny

    Let's focus our efforts on something a little more important.

    Thanks.

  14. Potential for new cybernetic prosthetics by Colgate2003 · · Score: 3, Informative
    they will never be as good as the limbs we were born with

    Not quite as good, but I just interviewed someone about new research into interfacing neurons with electronics that could lead to Luke Skywalker-like replacement limbs. Harvard researchers have figured out a way to directly read and write to a neuron with digital electronics.

  15. Prosthetics beat natural limbs by r00t · · Score: 2, Insightful

    6 million dollar man
    Inspector Gadget
    Luke Skywalker

    Fake limbs can resist bullets. They can have powerful weapons and other tools. If you buy the Dr. Strangelove model, you get to blame the arm's buggy software when it grabs a woman's butt.

  16. Re:Radial idea by Stormwatch · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Heinlein, is that you?!

    --
    Circumcision is child abuse.
  17. Time for the new DARPA challenge! by JoeCommodore · · Score: 2, Interesting

    A member of each tem gets one limb sawn off and the first one to regrow it to appropriate size wins the prize!

    --
    "Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
  18. worthy of King Midas by Original+Replica · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Immortality may be just not that far off, but all that would lead to is an increase in over population and wealth stratifacation. I'm all for improving the quality of life for amputees but I think a century or so is long enough for any one person.

    --
    We are all just people.
  19. so about the guy who got the penis transplant.... by Nocturnal+Deviant · · Score: 2, Funny

    now he wont have to look down and see another mans penis lol

    --
    -Noc