It's a miracle: mice regrow hearts - [stunning news about tissue regeneration]

The Australian ^ | August 29, 2005

[snarks_when_bored]

This is on-going research, but if what's happening with these mice is verified and can be fully understood, the implications for human tissue regeneration could be huge.

[snarks_when_bored]

Ping

[airborne]

Spinal cord regeneration?

[snarks_when_bored]

Doesn't say that explicitly, but I suppose there's a chance. I suspect we'll hear more about this.

[snarks_when_bored]

Note that brain tissue doesn't regrow (at least in these mice). So nerve regeneration may be as yet out of reach.

[atomicpossum]

Then there's hope for Donald Trump.

[PatrickHenry]

EvolutionPing

A pro-evolution science list with over 300 names. See the list's explanation at my freeper homepage. Then FReepmail to be added or dropped.

[snarks_when_bored]

Then there's hope for Donald Trump.

And John Wayne Bobbitt, too, maybe.

[PatrickHenry]

None of the sources I regularly scan is reporting this. At the moment, I'm skeptical. It looks like those wild stories that routinely come from the Russian tabloids. But we shall see.

[Maurice Tift]

It's just that awkward time between falling into farm machinery and having your arms grow back fully...

[Vinnie]

John Bobbitt?

[clee1]

Nothing is too high for the daring or mortals;
they storm heaven in their folly.
- Quintus Horatius Flaccus

[snarks_when_bored]

Yes, I was a bit wary myself, but Ellen Heber-Katz is for real:

Ellen Heber-Katz

[clee1]

He's the feller what got his equipment cut off by his wife.

[HiTech RedNeck]

And just exactly what the bleep does this have to do with evolution????? You have evolution on the brain.

[majorskeptic]

It would be nice to discover just how to help evolution along just a bit to allow for some of these 'miracles'. This is why evolution is important, we can possibly live much longer and with better health.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Uh, evolution can't be "helped." It is fortuitousness all the way.

[snarks_when_bored]

From the Heber-Katz link:

Wound Healing in Mice: In the process of carrying out an autoimmunity experiment, the Heber-Katz research team noted that in the MRL strain of mice, punched ear holes used for long term identification rapidly closed without any sign of scarring. Besides lack of scarring when the ear hole closed, a blastema formed and new hair follicles and cartilage grew back, processes not generally seen in adult mammals though thought to be part of a regenerative process seen in amphibians. The laboratory has been actively pursuing the identification of genes involved in this trait along with the mechanisms that allow this healing to take place. They found that the matrix metalloproteinases are upregulated early after wounding and just prior to blastema formation and that the molecule Pref-1 is upregulated late after wounding and just as the blastema is beginning to redifferentiate into mature cells. These studies have led the research team to examine multiple tissues that show the unusual regenerative capacity seen in this mouse (5-10).

But this appears not to be absolutely new research, so perhaps there's a bit of after-the-fact hype involved.

[NicknamedBob]

"It's just that awkward time between falling into farm machinery and having your arms grow back fully... "

Yep. No corn-on-the-cob for you.

[airborne]

PING!