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Scientists Regrow Chicken Wing
An anonymous reader writes "Unlike salamanders and lizards, most animals have lost the ability to replace missing limbs. But a research team in San Diego has been able to regenerate a wing in a chick embryo — a species not known to be able to regrow limbs — suggesting the potential for such regeneration exists innately in all vertebrates, including humans." From the article: "Manipulating Wnt signaling in humans is, of course, not possible at this point, Belmonte says, but hopes that these findings may eventually offer insights into current research examining the ability of stem cells to build new human body tissues and parts. For example, he said Wnt signaling may push mature cells go back in time and 'dedifferentiate' into stem-like cells, in order to be able to then differentiate once more, producing all of the different tissues needed to build a limb."
New KFC Neverending bucket of chicken!
For when just one heart bypass won't do.
*mmmmm neverending chicken wings*
The explanation that I am familiar with (and if there are any evolutionary biologists present, feel free to correct me) is that regeneration is too time consuming for a warm blooded animal.
With a reptile or amphibian, the wounded individual can afford to lose the weeks or more of downtime while their wounds or missing limbs regenerate. With a mammal or bird, the constant need for food to fuel a warm blooded metabolism wouldn't give a wounded individual time to heal in the same fashion; instead of regeneration, we scar instead. To use an technological metaphor, mammals slap a patch on the wound for faster recovery, while reptiles take the time to do a thorough repair job.
In any case, in the wild complete loss of limb would almost always be fatal for a mammal (barring infection or blood loss, you might live long enough to starve to death), so faster, incomplete healing via scarring is going to be good enough for most of the injuries we'd have a chance to recover from. We trade the ability to recover fully for the ability to recover quickly.
Today of course we no longer die as easily from our wounds, or from the inability to fend for ourselves after being crippled, so we have a vested interest in reworking this process. If we could induce regeneration in amputees for example, we could put them in a hospital for however long it takes to grow back and regain the use of their limbs - something we never could have done in our evolutionary history.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.