Building The Body Electric [Tufts scientists manipulate electrical signals, sparks new eye]

ScienceNews.org ^ | December 31st, 2011; Vol.180 #14 | Tina Hesman Saey

[fight_truth_decay]

Scientists have created a tadpole that can literally watch what it eats: The tadpole has an eye growing in its gut.

Led by developmental biologist Michael Levin of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., the researchers manipulated cells in the tadpole’s gut to take on a specific electrical state. Those cells developed into a fully formed eye. Inducing just the right electrical state in cells can lead to eye growth anywhere on the body, the team reports online December 7 in Development.

Bizarre as the experiment sounds, it is a major step toward regenerating complex organs and limbs. One day, Levin says, someone who loses an arm or leg might be able to slip on a special sleeve that will electrically stimulate cells at the wound site to regrow the missing limb.

[fight_truth_decay]

A tadpole has an extra eye growing in its gut (indicated with red circle) thanks to Tufts University scientists who manipulated electrical signals in gut cells to spark eye development.Sherry Aw, Vaibhav Pai, M. Levin

[donhunt]

Has anyone informed Kermit about this?

[Sacajaweau]

Like I've said, the real object of all this cell manipulation has always been to sell body parts retail. You thing the drug companies are crooks...wait till this takes hold.

They won't want folks to sign off to "take my parts". Retail will be much more profitable.

[Vince Ferrer]

A long time ago I read a book called The Body Electric, whose authoor had done some experiments similar to this. He was very sure that missing limbs could be regenerated even in species that did not have that ability, by artificially stimulating the wound with electrical currents. I had always wondered what became of that research, and if it had led to anything.

[struggle]

Let’s focus on real beauty:

I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?
And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?

[loveliberty2]

And, today Dr. Oz showed an actual surgery where a patient who had had a mastectomy later underwent a surgical procedure to rebuild her breast, using a now-experimental process which removes fat from one part of the body, injects it with her own harvested stem cells, and a new breast grows.

There followed a discussion about other experiments now being conducted with veterans who have lost limbs, and the potential for regrowing them using stem cells.

[dragonblustar]

Maybe this could be used to have the GOP in Congress grow a spine.

[JRandomFreeper]

I'd go through teething again if I could regrow my teef. The store bought ones are never where they are supposed to be.

And there is some research on that, as well.

/johnny

[luvbach1]

I sing the body electric

Walt glowed in this one.

[fight_truth_decay]

http://www.exploratorium.edu/imaging_station/research/planaria/story_planaria2.php

In grade school, I remember I ordered Planaria to slice up for a science fair to show regeneration... they clone themselves after slicing off the head or the tail, or any part of, etc. I was quite intrigued with this project.

[Quote]”The ability of these cells to become whatever tissue the body needs is very similar to the capacity of embryonic stem cells in humans and other vertebrates...”

[fight_truth_decay]

Your post made me think of Washington's teef..and I just learned something.

Did George Washington Really Have Wooden Teeth?

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Dakota Dental

[hellbender]

The tadpole has an eye growing in its gut

Great. Maybe someday we won't need to undergo colonoscopies. We can look in on our own innards.

[Vince Ferrer]

Some day pretty son, you probably will grow new teeth. That one appears to be close to market even.

[JRandomFreeper]

Some day pretty son

Shucks, I used to be...

Oh.. wait, you meant soon... ;)

/johnny

[JRandomFreeper]

We can look in on our own innards.

Unless they figure out how to grow lights in there, nyet.... Besides. I know what I eat. I don't want to see the intermediate processing. :)

/johnny

[JRandomFreeper]

His teeth contained lead? And he owned a brewery and stills? What could possibly go wrong?

/johnny

[Razzz42]

One of the financial guys I was listening was saying that if you could live another 10 or 20 years that would be long enough to see replacement body parts grown with the patient’s own stem cells become the norm thus making people’s life spans even better.

They grew a trachea in the lab and transplanted to a patient successfully using his own stems cells, took a week to grow it.

http://www.courant.com/health/la-he-trachea-qanda-20110709,0,4418428.story

Good success in growing teeth in mice although not fed by the blood stream, they can be implanted and crowned.

[adorno]

Finally, there is hope for liberals!

Perhaps some day, that procedure can be used to grow them some brains.

[fight_truth_decay]

.."eye growing in its gut Great. Maybe someday we won't need to undergo colonoscopies"

.....eye growing in his gut, not butt

[fight_truth_decay]

The upper and lower gold plates of George’s dentures were connected by springs which pushed the plates against the upper and lower ridges of his mouth to keep the dentures fitting snuggly. This means that President Washington had to be very intentional about holding his jaws closed to make his teeth bite together. If Mr. President relaxed his jaw, his mouth would pop open!

It is speculated that this may be part of the reason why President Washington always looks so stern in all of his portraits – he’s trying to hold his mouth shut. (Or perhaps it’s because he was turned down twice in marriage proposals to two different women...)...SCARY, you think? Does not a chick magnet make!

/LOL