How To Grow a Head

Taco Cowboy writes "British scientists have found a mechanism within our gene sequence that allows the growing of a new head — with brains, etc. The gene is tentatively known as smed-prep, and the information contained in smed-prep also makes the new cells appear in the right place and organise themselves into working structures."

Comments

Oh Sure

[eldavojohn]

Everyone was in favor of growing Hitler's head. But the when you grow it on the body of a great white shark -- ooh, suddenly you've gone too far!

(side note if you recognize that paraphrase: mark your calendars/DVRs for June 24th!)

Re:Oh Sure

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost made the mistake of thinking that quote was from Super-Scientist Dr. Venture, shame on me for not remembering every single thing the Professor ever said.

Re:Oh Sure

[Anonymous Coward]

Sharks with frickin führer beams on their heads?

Re:Oh Sure

[WrongSizeGlass]

Heads in a jar just like on Futurama!

I guess an isolated brain isn’t good enough for them and they want the whole 'head enchilada'.

Re:Oh Sure

[Ironix]

I can't help but reply to this.

Re:Oh Sure

[Jurily]

Good news everyone!

Re:Oh Sure

[biryokumaru]

Note for mods: check Ironix's sig.

Re:Oh Sure

[FatdogHaiku]

Where's your head at?

And that's the key! If we can get these things to grow near the groin and with the proper orientation they could be really popular...

Re:Oh Sure

[EdIII]

Of course, he did build a machine for that you know...

Would that make it...

[Anonymous Coward]

a smed head?

Re:Would that make it...

[Goffee71]

As it'll be a British-designed head, it'll come with Dwayne Dibley's teeth.

Re:Would that make it...

[skine]

So the British scientists are getting ahead, but only a little.

Re:Would that make it...

[Anonymous Coward]

As it'll be a British-designed head, it'll come with Dwayne Dibley's teeth.

Can it have Lister's Hair?

Re:Would that make it...

[DocMAME]

No, the original poster was correct... SMED-head, as in Smed-prep... but thanks for playing!

Re:Would that make it...

[Anonymous Coward]

As it'll be a British-designed head, it'll come with Dwayne Dibley's teeth.

and it will leak oil.

Okay, that's it...

[ShadowDragoonFTW]

Okay, that's it, science is getting too damn strange for me now.

Re:Okay, that's it...

[Yvan256]

Take the blue pill. The story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.

Re:Okay, that's it...

[tmosley]

Then roll over and find a copy of your own head in the bed with you.

Re:Okay, that's it...

[ta bu shi da yu]

Say "no" to bed head.

Re:Okay, that's it...

[brainboyz]

What if identical twins hook up?

As long as they're cute and female, it's no problem as long as I'm in bed with them.

Re:Okay, that's it...

[Aceticon]

Only it's not a copy. It's your real head. You're the copy.

They always say

[kyrio]

two heads are better than one.

Re:They always say

[vegiVamp]

Bad head is better than none.

You left another typo, there.

How "working"?

[ciaran_o_riordan]

"Working" as in, you pull the chord and the ear moves?

Or "working" as in, you go for the chord, but the things runs off and starts multiplying and plotting the demise of your species?

Re:How "working"?

[srussia]

"Working" as in, you pull the chord and the ear moves?

Or "working" as in, you go for the chord, but the things runs off and starts multiplying and plotting the demise of your species?

Both. How strange the change from major to minor!

Yes but can they do it without copying Migranes?

[hAckz0r]

They could make a fortune on that technology, but the problem is how to transition to the new one gracefully?

Zaphod?

[A beautiful mind]

Zaphod, my buddy! Is that you?!

Re:Zaphod?

[dkleinsc]

Actually, I'm surprised we've gotten this far without quoting this cute ditty by Shel Silverstein:

Chester came to school and said,
“Durn, I growed another head.”
Teacher said, “It’s time you knowed
The word is ‘grew’ instead of ‘growed’ ”

Great way...

[Combatso]

Great way to get a head in this business

Grow parts of fingers?

[gTsiros]

I lost the last phalanx (joint including) of my right middle and right ring fingers.
I am impatiently waiting for the tech to get here so i can get my fingers back...

Re:Grow parts of fingers?

[VorpalRodent]

According to the article, this technology is already here...assuming you can accept your new fingers having hair, eyes, and a brain.

Re:Grow parts of fingers?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the article, this technology is already here...assuming you can accept your new fingers having hair, eyes, and a brain.

Everything was going great right up until I started masturbating ... then it got awesome.

Re:Grow parts of fingers?

[qoncept]

I'm glad I read through before replying, because I like yours more than what I was going to say.

Re:Grow parts of fingers?

[holmstar]

Saw a documentary once where a guy who had lost a good half inch off the end of his finger and managed to regrow it, complete with fingerprints, by keeping it moist, and coating it with powdered "scaffold" protein every day. Apparently the presence of the scaffold protein triggered the stem cells that were present to start regrowing the lost tissue. The guy got the treatment idea from a friend who was studying tissue regeneration in amphibians.

Re:Grow parts of fingers?

[Polo]

Check this out:

http://health.howstuffworks.com/extracellular-matrix.htm

but wikipedia says it might be unremarkable:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regeneration_(biology)

Re:Yes but can they do it without copying Migranes

[Mindcontrolled]

At the moment, this only works for flatworms, whose purchasing power is rather limited, last time I checked. So I doubt they will make a fortune soon. Then again, the difference between a banker and a flatworm is probably somewhat negligible. Actually, no, I am sorry. My sincerest apologies to all the flatworms reading slashdot.

Smed-prep

[oodaloop]

Or smed-prop? TFA says both smed-prop and smed-prep without the capital S.

TFA also says that the gene is in flatworms, while TFS says "our".

Overall, though, best slashdot summary ever.

hmmph, sensational

[Gnaythan1]

From what I gather, they figured out the gene sequence in flatworms for growing another head for a flatworm, and can do so consistently.

Since our genes are similar, they probably can figure out where the genes for growing a human head are, and *might* be able to use that info for regenerating damaged brain tissue

No zaphod's anytime soon.

Re:hmmph, sensational

[reverseengineer]

In particular, it mostly illustrates that in flatworms, body plan genes can be routinely reactivated throughout an organism's life. Most multicellular animals on Earth have a series of genes known as Hox or homeobox genes whose role is to determine the correct placement of structures on the body- depending on the form of the organism, "structures" can mean things like organs, limbs, eyes, tails, etc. The activity of these genes is so important that they tend to have been strongly conserved sequences throughout time- we have some Hox genes that are very similar to those in flies, for instance. This conservation is helped along by the fact that the Hox genes ultimately work by signaling other genes to work; the signaling cascade functions whether the signal is for the development of insect wings or for bird wings.

According to the paper, the signaling involved in the development of the posterior end of planaria (Wnt/beta-catenin) had already been identified; the discovery of Smed-prep explains how the development of anterior structures (the trunk and head of the animal) are regulated. In addition, they found that the anterior and posterior pathways normally work in opposition (to avoid growing a tail on the head or head on the tail), and by silencing the posterior signaling, then activating head regeneration, a head would grow at both ends.

From what we know of human Hox genes, the picture is not so simple- even at the most basic level of developmental organization there are several genes that direct development of the head, so there isn't a master gene we can reactivate to grow an ectopic head, but many of the same developmental pathways (Wnt, for instance) are the same or similar across organisms.

Re:hmmph, sensational

[nohelix]

While you are mostly correct about this, even in planarians, head regeneration requires a suite of genes. By cutting the animal, those genes are activated and then the RNAi is used to alter their expression patterns. It is not as simple as one gene makes the whole head. Its that this gene is one of several including the Wnt/beta-catenin genes that work in concert to properly pattern the head.

To get the multiple head phenotype, the animal must be cut and in its 'regeneration' expression profile - not its homeostasis expression patterns. Nou-darke causes ectopic (extra) brain formation (in a different species of planarians) and brain region extension (in both species) even in non-regenerating planarians, which is not how this gene (Smed-prep) works.

Note that S. mediterranea has two strains, a sexual (cross-fertilizing hermaphrodites) and an asexual strain (that reproduces by fissioning). This means that the animals maintain adult stem cells that can regenerate an entire planarian (and are the only dividing cells in the animal). This gene is not expressed in those stem cells, but it certainly interacts with them in the development of the ectopic heads.
Disclaimer: I work in a S. mediterranea research lab

for *planaria* not humans

[capoccia]

unless you belong to Planariidae, you don't have much hope of this benefiting you.

Re:What???

[DarkKnightRadick]

redneck isn't racially charged, AC. It refers to a sub-group that encompasses many racial groups (though I have not encountered Asian rednecks, I have met black and white ones).

Obligatory MIB

[Anonymous Coward]

"Do you have ANY idea how much that stings?!"

Hello??? This is Slashdot

[GodfatherofSoul]

Those are not the body parts we seek.

And for further reading

[kenp2002]

Science always advances faster then the moral and ethics of the society.

Science Fiction tends to serve as the cursory warning of the abuses of science. Please reply with suggetsions on reading that our fellow scientists should watch when they are not busy playing God (in the figurative sense.)

The Island comes to mind but even comic books like the Micronauts foretold the warnings of Body Bank abuses. The Repo Men is a recent film that from what I can gather might also make for a good reading.

Oh how I wish that science would first think:
"Ok if this works what are the ethics" rather then "do it first, then we'll worry about the ethics later."

I'm all for science, I just have the crippling burden of being a history buff, knowing how often science gives birth to atrocities. Comparing post-1600s science has made religion look tame.

Re:And for further reading

[drinkypoo]

Oh how I wish that science would first think:
"Ok if this works what are the ethics" rather then "do it first, then we'll worry about the ethics later."

Science doesn't think anything. It's a process. Plenty of scientists can be assumed to have chosen morality over science. You don't hear about them because they didn't do anything. All scientific progress can be put to ends both good and ill, there is therefore nothing ethical or unethical about science fact, only the actions of men.

Re:And for further reading

[nohelix]

This is very true. Just look at Nobel [Wikipedia]. When designed nitroglycerin, he was trying to make a safer explosive for miners. Instead he made a tool of war and was horrified by it. It was not his morality nor his invention that was flawed. It was the people who used it. I would think by now that our society had moved past the base point of science is evil and technology is amoral. That cell phone in your pocket could be used to make a bomb threat or call an ambulance for the guy having a heart attack. As for this research, it is quite a ways off from any useful/practical applications. But people hope that when it does come to fruition, it will be for things first like severe brain damage cause by an accident, a blood clot or other damage. And while yes, planarians have a cephalic ganglia (brain) and a complex nervous system for being a simple invertebrate, it is vastly less complex than even a mouse brain. As a case in point, their "eyes" are a photoreceptor not a lens, so while they can see and react to light, they do not have the capability to distinguish shapes. Disclaimer: I work in a research lab that uses S. mediterranea, the flatworm used in this paper.

Re:And for further reading

[lennier]

Science doesn't think anything. It's a process.

And therein lies a problem. An unthinking process is not something you want to have any kind of authority in the world whatsoever that's not checked and triple-checked by a guardian with thought and ethics. Otherwise it's going to stop all over you, guaranteed.

You wouldn't run 'rm -rf *' as root, would you? Neither should you start an amoral process called 'science' and let it do whatever it wants. You should query at every point 'is this pursuit or organisation working for humanity, or against it?'

Plenty of scientists can be assumed to have chosen morality over science. You don't hear about them because they didn't do anything.

No, I think the statement you're looking for is 'You've heard quite a bit about some of them because, for instance, they were extremely outspoken against what they considered to be science becoming abusive and destructive for exactly the reasons mentioned above.'

All scientific progress can be put to ends both good and ill, there is therefore nothing ethical or unethical about science fact, only the actions of men.

Not quite correct either. There is plenty of scientific knowledge, for example, what happens when a live human encounters poison gas, anthrax, radiation, or a landmine, which can't really be either gained ethically, or used ethically. Unless you define 'ethical' as 'causing pain and suffering to someone the current political regime dislikes.'

Some knowledge is only really useful for causing suffering. Some scientific 'progress' is progress in the art of maiming and killing. It's usually blandly called 'defense research'.

Some knowledge looks like it might be dual-use for hurting or helping, but turns out in practice that the side effects outweigh the benefits. That's the sort of knowledge which an ethics check would have prevented.

RTFA ? Why would we want to do that ?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is actually about a flatworm's ability to regenerate from serious injuries, not specifically about growing heads.
They claim they've found the genes responsible for regeneration in flatworms.

The title is "Gene that allows growing a new head identified
Now we just need memory backup - and worm DNA"

Which says quite a bit more than the catchy but non-informative title this article on slashdot has.

how to get ahead in navigating

[MagicM]

I know a group of cannibals that would trade you a nice banana picker for one of these!

Re:Irresistible blonde joke...

[maroberts]

Whilst a doubling of memory capacity is surely good, I'm not sure that adding a head with a single extra brain cell will improve a blonde's intelligence.... :-)

Re:What???

[Kell Bengal]

Whether it's nature or nurture that's at fault, the ignorant are products of their parents/culture. If you're born in county, odds are you're going to grow up to be ignorant without any scope for choice in the matter. Certainly, some people by change have the opportunity to exercise the choice to stop being ignorant, but to do so they must have already started down that path somewhat. After all, the beginning of wisdom is to realise that you know nothing.

I don't blame the stupid and ignorant for being stupid or ignorant. I blame the smart people in charge of media and education who deny them the opportunity to be otherwise.

Tonight...

[RuBLed]

Pinky: Brain, I have an idea...

Re:Tonight...

[infinite9]

Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?

I think so Brain. But if people could put heads at the end of their hands, they would never leave the house.

Is it just me or....

[ProppaT]

Is it just me or is this the last body part we should actually care about regenerating? Once my brain is gone, I couldn't care less if you regenerated it for me to start over with a fresh, empty brain or not. I'd rather them find a way to regenerate my body on my existing head, thank you very much.

Re:Is it just me or....

[Wrexs0ul]

Long term benefits would be regrowing parts of the head, supposedly including areas of the brain you'd lose from trauma.

Your point brings-up a good question though: how much of your brain can you replace before you're no-longer you?

Spiritual arguments aside, of course.

-Matt

Next head....

[mseeger]

Multi-Threading, here i come....

needs tweaking

[JackSpratts]

as is typical, lab results are promising, fascinating even, but not yet entirely practical. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v157/JackSpratts/PUFFER-SMITH-47645.jpg

Re:Yes but can they do it without copying Migranes

[Mindcontrolled]

Been wondering about that, too - my planarian ain't as fluid as it used to be. It might very well be "Prepare for the revenge of your planarian overlords, insolent ape!". It's quite similar in pronounciation, you see?

Re:Yes but can they do it without copying Migranes

[splutty]

And we all know what a group of bankers is called right?

We have a flock of geese, a herd of horses, etc.

And then there's a wunch of bankers.

Re:What???

[jweller]

I realize that in this room, defending the redneck is probably about as fruitless as pissing up a rope, but here goes. My next door neighbor is one of the biggest rednecks you will ever meet, and he will tell you the same. He works a blue collar Union job, loves NASCAR, drives a pickup truck, smokes dope, and swills more cheap beer than you can imagine. He also has been married to the same woman for 25+ years, put both his daughters through College, Worked for the same company for 20+ years and is now a shop foreman, isn't a racist, and is generally the nicest guy you'd ever want to meet.

I think the pejorative most of you are looking for is "White trash"

Re:Yes but can they do it without copying Migranes

[Mindcontrolled]

I was rather aiming at the parasitical nature both groups have in common than at the intellectual capacity. I had to learn, unfortunately, that Planariidae are actual non-parasitic flatworms, which makes the above apology to the poor creatures even more important.

Re:Yes but can they do it without copying Migranes

[sznupi]

I don't know, I can't really tell whether that was a banker or a flatworm (again, deepest apologies in the latter case)

getting ahead of myself

[NicknamesAreStupid]

I've been waiting for this news, as you might tell from my post, I need another head. As for "two heads are better than one," there is a wonderful article about a truly remarkable person(s) in Minnesota with two heads that is doing splendidly (metabolically) and may redefine our stereotypes of a 'person'. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abigail_and_Brittany_Hensel. Actually, she/they have two heads, spinal chords, hearts, and stomachs. They raise all kinds of wonderful social issues regarding privacy, marriage, procreation, and the law. For example, what is she/they ran for President? Would we have a leader that could speak to both sides of the aisle at once? Argue both sides at once? Veto and pass a bill at the same time? Be for and against every controversial subject? My god, Ms. Hensel(s) may be the PERFECT POLITICIAN! Two head are better than one, politically speaking.

Re:getting ahead of myself

[Kirin Fenrir]

Basically the questions concern privacy (as individuals they have very little) and morality (do we want two men sharing them, or do we want them sharing one man).

It doesn't matter what we want. Only what they want. Society needs to stay out of the personal lives of consenting adults.

Perhaps I should have been more clear

[Locke2005]

When I prayed every night, "Dear God, I wish I could get a little head", this was NOT what I meant!

Re:What???

[sycodon]

For your average Slashdotter, "labor" is the walk from the far ends of the parking lot to their cubicle.