First Mammals Observed Regenerating Tissue

ananyo writes "Two species of African spiny mouse have been caught at something no other mammal is known to do — completely regenerating damaged tissue. The work could help improve wound healing in humans. The species — Acomys kempi and Acomys percivali — have skin that is brittle and easily torn, which helps them to escape predators by jettisoning patches of their skin when caught or bitten. Researchers report that whereas normal laboratory mice (Mus musculus) grow scar tissue when their skin is removed, African spiny mice can regrow complete suites of hair follicles, skin, sweat glands, fur and even cartilage (abstract). Tissue regeneration has not been seen in mammals before, though it is common in crustaceans, insects, reptiles and amphibians."

Comments

Re:As a Unix admin

[c0lo]

I've spent the last 20 years perfecting my Unix skills. The main thing I've always felt was holding me back form perfect success is a lack of a neck beard and no where near enough sweat glands. This may finally get me to perfect my professional arts.

No disrespect, but...

Bad news: wrong choice as repository. If you haven't have them ever, you have nothing to regenerate - you'll need to grow them anew, which is in totally different another repo ( :-P hint - your parents, if still in business, may know something about it).
Good news - the UNIX world evolved: with a correct choice of repositories, good chances that you can "apt-get install neck-beard" or "yum install neck-beard" (that is: no longer need to manually download the patches to apply them).