Posted on 09/01/2005 4:12:01 AM PDT by snarks_when_bored
It's a miracle: mice regrow hearts
And when cells from the test mouse are injected into ordinary mice, they too acquire the ability to regenerate, the US-based researchers say.
Their discoveries raise the prospect that humans could one day be given the ability to regenerate lost or damaged organs, opening up a new era in medicine.
Details of the research will be presented next week at a scientific conference on ageing titled Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, at Cambridge University in Britain.
The research leader, Ellen Heber-Katz, professor of immunology at the Wistar Institute, a US biomedical research centre, said the ability of the mice at her laboratory to regenerate organs appeared to be controlled by about a dozen genes.
Professor Heber-Katz says she is still researching the genes' exact functions, but it seems almost certain humans have comparable genes.
"We have experimented with amputating or damaging several different organs, such as the heart, toes, tail and ears, and just watched them regrow," she said.
"It is quite remarkable. The only organ that did not grow back was the brain.
"When we injected fetal liver cells taken from those animals into ordinary mice, they too gained the power of regeneration. We found this persisted even six months after the injection."
Professor Heber-Katz made her discovery when she noticed the identification holes that scientists punch in the ears of experimental mice healed without any signs of scarring in the animals at her laboratory.
The self-healing mice, from a strain known as MRL, were then subjected to a series of surgical procedures. In one case the mice had their toes amputated -- but the digits grew back, complete with joints.
In another test some of the tail was cut off, and this also regenerated. Then the researchers used a cryoprobe to freeze parts of the animals' hearts, and watched them grow back again. A similar phenomenon was observed when the optic nerve was severed and the liver partially destroyed.
The researchers believe the same genes could confer greater longevity and are measuring their animals' survival rate. However, the mice are only 18 months old, and the normal lifespan is two years so it is too early to reach firm conclusions.
Scientists have long known that less complex creatures have an impressive ability to regenerate. Many fish and amphibians can regrow internal organs or even whole limbs. The Sunday Times
29aug05
SCIENTISTS have created "miracle mice" that can regenerate amputated limbs or damaged vital organs, making them able to recover from injuries that would kill or permanently disable normal animals.
The experimental animals are unique among mammals in their ability to regrow their heart, toes, joints and tail.
Ping
Spinal cord regeneration?
Doesn't say that explicitly, but I suppose there's a chance. I suspect we'll hear more about this.
Note that brain tissue doesn't regrow (at least in these mice). So nerve regeneration may be as yet out of reach.
Then there's hope for Donald Trump.
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Then there's hope for Donald Trump.
And John Wayne Bobbitt, too, maybe.
It's just that awkward time between falling into farm machinery and having your arms grow back fully...
John Bobbitt?
Nothing is too high for the daring or mortals;
they storm heaven in their folly.
- Quintus Horatius Flaccus
He's the feller what got his equipment cut off by his wife.
And just exactly what the bleep does this have to do with evolution????? You have evolution on the brain.
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.
Uh, evolution can't be "helped." It is fortuitousness all the way.
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.
Yep. No corn-on-the-cob for you.
PING!
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