Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Researchers Discover A Surprising New Role for Lungs: Making Blood (ucsf.edu)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the lung-blood dept.

schwit1 quotes ScienceAlert: In experiments involving mice, the team found that lungs produce more than 10 million platelets (tiny blood cells) per hour, equating to the majority of platelets in the animals' circulation. This goes against the decades-long assumption that bone marrow produces all of our blood components. Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco also discovered a previously unknown pool of blood stem cells that makes this happen inside the lung tissue -- cells that were incorrectly assumed to mainly reside in bone marrow. "This finding definitely suggests a more sophisticated view of the lungs -- that they're not just for respiration, but also a key partner in formation of crucial aspects of the blood," says one of the researchers, Mark R. Looney.
The platelet-producing cells actually migrate from the bone marrow to the lungs.

33 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. Don't smoke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    This is another reason not to smoke.

    1. Re:Don't smoke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Burning organic matter of any kind, no matter the source, causes lung cancer, even if it is inhaling from burning fucking oranges and ordinary grass.
      This is a general rule proven by chemistry, science, and medicine, and weed being organic is part of it. So no, there is no exception or excuse.

      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3875302/table/T1/

    2. Re:Don't smoke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Weed is very healthy, tobacco is not.

    3. Re:Don't smoke by _merlin · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Actually unfiltered joint smoke has the best THC/tar ratio. Bong smoke is worse than unfiltered joint smoke but better than filtered joint smoke. The trouble is, anything that's good at filtering out tar from the smoke will be even better at filtering out THC.

    4. Re:Don't smoke by Gilgaron · · Score: 2

      If you ate it maybe... the parent's point is that smoke is bad for you, same for fine dust. Source doesn't matter as much.

    5. Re:Don't smoke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      There is a lack of scientific / medical studies linking weed to lung cancer.
      When reading about it in these terms this made me reconsider the harmlessness of weed. This might be based on the fact there's no study with 500 or 1000 persons (even if half is the control group) where people were smoking two or three joints a day (or more, whatever) over two or three decades (whatever). If so healthiness of weed might be a very weak proposition.

      Albeit nicotine might cause other problems, but the breath and lungs and cardio-vascular easily are the biggest issue.

    6. Re:Don't smoke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Burning organic matter of any kind, no matter the source, causes lung cancer, even if it is inhaling from burning fucking oranges and ordinary grass.
      This is a general rule proven by chemistry, science, and medicine, and weed being organic is part of it. So no, there is no exception or excuse.

      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3875302/table/T1/

      The main difference being the narcotic payload.

      Nicotene has a positive feedback loop (stimulate helps you be productive so it doesn't interfear with your ability to buy smokes, and is highly addictive and habit forming) while TCH has a negative one (habit forming but not terribly addictive, and reduces your productivity so needing to make a living to afford Cheetos and pot will tend to reduce your consumption).

      Bottom line, a typical person smokes more tobacco than pot, so the cumulative long term health risk from pot tends to be lower.

    7. Re:Don't smoke by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      The stuff about tar is just moronic tobacco addicts trying to justify.

      In the 1970s and `80s, they advertised lots of "light" cigarettes that had lower tar. They really did have lower tar. They had slightly higher nicotine in most cases. Cancer didn't go down for people who smoked the "light" cigarettes, it went up. Why? Because nicotine is a carcinogen at any dose, and the tar isn't.

      People who abuse nicotine patches have increased skin cancer at the site of the patch. There is no tar in the patch. Why? Because nicotine is a carcinogen.

      People who chew nicotine gum get increased gum, tongue, and throat cancer, even though the gum has no tar. Why? Nicotine is a carcinogen.

      Notice a pattern?

      Heavy pot smokers who do not use nicotine do not appear to have increased rates of cancer. People who use both have increased rates. This isn't really that hard to understand.

    8. Re:Don't smoke by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Oranges have hardcore chemicals in the peel for microbial chemical warfare, so of course their smoke is very toxic. Using examples like this to establish a claimed universal fact is really lame.

      One thing that medicine does know; smoke inhalation is unhealthy.

      Another thing that medicine does know: different types of smoke have different effects. They're not all the same.

    9. Re:Don't smoke by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      This might be based on the fact there's no study with 500 or 1000 persons (even if half is the control group) where people were smoking two or three joints a day (or more, whatever) over two or three decades (whatever).

      Ignorance of the results of such studies does not imply that they do not exist. Go ye out on a journey to the interwebs and seek for studies!

    10. Re:Don't smoke by Wootery · · Score: 1

      ...but in far lower volumes. Great job with the disingenuousness.

  2. I Wonder by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I wonder if this is where HIV hides when people who are HIV+ are on meds and the virus is undetectable. I don't really know anything, but it was my first thought.

    1. Re:I Wonder by slew · · Score: 3, Informative

      I wonder if this is where HIV hides when people who are HIV+ are on meds and the virus is undetectable. I don't really know anything, but it was my first thought.

      FWIW, researcher have already discovered that HIV hides in the lymph nodes... But nice try.

    2. Re:I Wonder by king+neckbeard · · Score: 2

      GP is just wild speculation, but is there a compelling reason to believe that HIV couldn't hide in multiple places?

      --
      This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
  3. Re: Researchers from UC? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Those new guys from India are already making breakthroughs! Cheaper and smarter!!!

  4. Humbling by Cyphase · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And this is only now being discovered. Another reminder of how little we know.

    --
    by Cyphase ( 907627 )
    1. Re:Humbling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Well, duh.
      Certain Platelets, and certain types of T-Cells, have long been known as originating in the Differentiating Cells in the Lungs. (The Differentiating bit pretty much explains Lung Cancer, when it goes wrong.) I learned of this some three decades back.
      Just why is this now News?
      (Excuse my English. Is "Differentiating" not the right word?)

    2. Re:Humbling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yes it was known the lungs made platelets before. What's new is that the lungs make most of the platelets rather than just a bit.

    3. Re:Humbling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      "Are you aware of the concept of the Singularity?"

      Well, duh.
      If I were you, I wouldn't spend too much time on such concepts as "Singularities".
      If I were you...
      E. M. Forster once wrote a short story called "The Machine Stops". Let me check now... 1909. 1909 was when he wrote it.
      You really should dig it up and read it. It will utterly blow up your mind, for something written in nineteen-zero-nine. (Is nineteen-zed-nine still acceptable?)

      "It shouldn't be surprising if scientists rediscovers things over and over again..."
      That is what we do. As a bored Chemistry Student in..."Sweden"... I heard a most amazing thing: a New Element just discovered- Element 106. Of course, it wasn't discovered; "We" had created it. There is no role in Cosmological Nucleosynthesis for any such thing as an Element 106.
      Twenty years later, I was a small part of a Human Team that confirmed this. Yes, "We" had created, and then recreated, Element 106. Seaborgium.
      And there is no fucking way out that any "AI' would even bother.

      "There is currently no human knowing everything that has been discovered. "
      But there once was a time when this was considered remotely possible. A well rounded mind, and a personal Library of maybe 100 volumes, sufficed. There is this word in English that now evades me about this. It has to do with your "Enlightenment" period.
      .
      "If they tried to learn everything that had been discovered first they wouldn't have time to do any research of their own."
      The two go "hand in hand". Is that right?
      In what you call "The Ukraine", We... not "We" exactly... had a very brief period of our own "Enlightenment". And it was very recent. Those in "Russia" despise us as useful Peasants, and those outside of Russia ignore us, except when it suits them. And so it goes. (This is a Vonnegut thing, right?)

      We have done some amazing things in our sorry little excuse for a "Country", that may amaze even you. Especially when it came to Parametric Optical Specstroscopy. The thing is, we had so many pretty girls to inspire us.
      What Russians, and now your Trump, does to such pretty girls these days...

    4. Re: Humbling by king+neckbeard · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Lungs do all the work. Bone marrow gets the credit. Sounds like most bosses. Nothing new or surprising in that.

      --
      This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
  5. Re: Researchers from UC? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    No one has ever said that.

  6. From 2000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1850212/

    1. Re:From 2000 by axewolf · · Score: 1

      Still though, it shows the possibility that medicine has become fixated on 'direct proof' and has narrowed down their perception in proportion to this and as a result throws out a lot of good information.

      This seems to speak of a fundamental flaw.

  7. What?!? We DON'T know everything?? by grep+-v+'.*'+* · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm sorry, this is wrong. The science has already been settled. You are INCORRECT, go back to the drawing board and do it until you get it right.

    THAT's what irks me about that line. If we know everything, if it's all actually settled and done with (except for a few minor lose ends), then we need no more scientists or research -- DO WE? SETTLED science then just becomes dogma, no better than religion.

    If "The Ancients" knew everything -- or if the current set of scientists know everything -- then we're done, all we need are yet more marketeers to sell us things in different combinations. That being said, you move forward with what you believe you know but you don't set it in stone, never to be examined again.

    Good for these guys.

    --
    If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
  8. All by karlalh · · Score: 1

    Such an amazing concept!!

  9. cancer and smoking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    This also gives insight into lung cancers. If the cancer-creating corruption occurs in a pluri-potent cell instead of a typical tissue, perhaps the route to metastasis is less difficult.

    -engrstudent

  10. Re:Animals don't feel pain - obviously by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Sounds like something hit a nerve... Oh wait you don't have any being a troll.

  11. Off topic by justthinkit · · Score: 1

    for something written in nineteen-zero-nine. (Is nineteen-zed-nine still acceptable?)

    I would suggest "nineteen-oh-nine"...and "zed" (or "zee") would be used to represent "z".

    --
    I come here for the love
  12. Transplant Problem by Thelasko · · Score: 1

    If the conclusion of this study is correct, why are bone marrow transplants successful at treating leukemia?

    --
    One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
    1. Re:Transplant Problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Because they generally irradiate the bones to kill the marrow (along with chemo that kills cells en masse) and probably end up zapping the lungs in the process too.

      Immunotherapies can't happen fast enough. Fix the broken cell mechanics (mitochondrial pathways) and let apoptosis do the job. This scorched earth / shotgun approach is barbaric.

    2. Re:Transplant Problem by wbr1 · · Score: 2

      leukemia is a cancer of the white blood cells. The cells being made in the lungs are platlets, not white blood cells. Not saying the lungs cant make white blood cells, but for now it looks like the major contributor to most blood components is marrow, so that is likely why current marrow targeting treatments work.

      --
      Silence is a state of mime.
  13. Re:What?!? We DON'T know everything?? by Gilgaron · · Score: 2

    I take it from your post you're not a scientist? I will assume you're an engineer for designing an analogy. If I have a meter stick, that it is a meter can be 'settled' even if our degree of certainty as to how precisely it is a meter is in question. If it is to be used for framing a house, we probably don't even need to check. If we're going to use it to build a machine, then we have to see about measuring its degree of precision. This research showed that while we were correct about how platelets are generated, the progenitor cells can migrate to the lungs. While we have a more precise view than we did before, the previous view is still essentially correct on the important points. Similarly, it can be settled that we have a common ancestor with dogs, even if the precision of our dating for the common ancestor is under frequent revision. This is how science can still be both settled and subject to change.

  14. Re: What?!? We DON'T know everything?? by Gilgaron · · Score: 1

    There's a meaningful difference between provisional knowledge and solipsism.