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It's a miracle: mice regrow hearts - [stunning news about tissue regeneration]
The Australian ^ | August 29, 2005

Posted on 09/01/2005 4:12:01 AM PDT by snarks_when_bored

It's a miracle: mice regrow hearts

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.

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


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: biology; medicine; regeneration; tpl; wonderdrugs
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To: snarks_when_bored

amazing, read later bump


61 posted on 09/01/2005 9:03:28 AM PDT by Kevin OMalley (No, not Freeper#95235, Freeper #1165: Charter member, What Was My Login Club.)
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To: snarks_when_bored

If the regeneration is occurring with telomere length matching that of the rest of the animal, the benefits will be huge for quality of life, but have little effect on length of life.

Frankly, it scares me a little that we may be getting close to massive extension of average lifespan. Not that I don't want to see it happen, but society is totally unprepared for it, and it's likely to lead to a Lord of the Flies type culture for quite a while, as population explodes, and people compete for resources that are becoming scarce (in the per person sense) at a frightening speed. Also, the technology is not likely to be cheap for the first generation or two that it's available, and we will have to face the hard question very fast of who gets it and who doesn't. It may be wonderful in the long run, but in the short run things will get very ugly.


62 posted on 09/01/2005 9:03:57 AM PDT by GovernmentShrinker
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To: pau1f0rd

Fetuses on whom surgery is performed in utero heal without scars.


63 posted on 09/01/2005 9:05:03 AM PDT by GovernmentShrinker
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To: majorskeptic

The kind of evolution you're talking about is called "intelligent design". But the designer isn't who the primary proponents of that catch-phrase think it is.


64 posted on 09/01/2005 9:06:37 AM PDT by GovernmentShrinker
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To: snarks_when_bored

ALL OF US SHOULD REMEMBER THAT IF PETA HAD ITS WAY, THIS TYPE OF LIFE SAVING RESEARCH WOULDN'T BE HAPPENING.


65 posted on 09/01/2005 9:07:24 AM PDT by winner3000
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To: <1/1,000,000th%
We were still talking about this being 20 or 30 years away.

From a healthcare point of view maybe that's still true.

Right. There's usually a long lag between theory and practice in healthcare.

66 posted on 09/01/2005 9:08:19 AM PDT by snarks_when_bored
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To: airborne

bump for later, thank you


67 posted on 09/01/2005 10:43:18 AM PDT by neverdem (May you be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows that you're dead.)
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To: Red Badger

Nothing is too high for the daring or mortals; they storm heaven in their folly. - Quintus Horatius Flaccus
Genesis Chapter 11:

6: And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

7: Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

////////////
this is actually the great terrifying thing that all men & women of God must reflect upon. Because DNA is just another language and the fearful thing is that it will be confounded in precisely the same way as was told in the Tower of Babel.

God will not be mocked.


68 posted on 09/01/2005 11:51:30 AM PDT by ckilmer
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To: snarks_when_bored

In the short term it could provide a brand new diet for house cats ala smorgasbord.


69 posted on 09/01/2005 11:58:36 AM PDT by Old Professer (As darkness is the absence of light, evil is the absence of good; innocence is blind.)
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To: ckilmer
It actually is a high compliment that was given by God to man. It flatly states that:

"nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do."

IOW, anything that man sets his mind to do WILL be accomplished! Manipulating DNA is not exactly playing God, but more like a child with building blocks. Man cannot MAKE DNA, yet. When he attempts to do that feat , then he is playing God. With all our technology, man cannot yet CREATE a single celled living entity. The "BREATH OF LIFE" is God's exclusive domain..........and ALWAYS will be........

70 posted on 09/01/2005 12:08:47 PM PDT by Red Badger (Want to be surprised? GOOOOGLE your own name. Want to have fun? GOOOOGLE your neighbor's......)
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To: El Gato; JudyB1938; Ernest_at_the_Beach; Robert A. Cook, PE; lepton; LadyDoc; jb6; tiamat; PGalt; ..
In Chimpanzee DNA, Signs of Y Chromosome's Evolution

F.D.A. Approves Drug Meant to Help Short Children Grow

FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list. Anyone can post any unrelated link as they see fit.

71 posted on 09/01/2005 1:03:21 PM PDT by neverdem (May you be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows that you're dead.)
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To: cpforlife.org; Coleus; Peach; Mr. Silverback; MHGinTN; Asphalt

ping


72 posted on 09/01/2005 1:05:01 PM PDT by neverdem (May you be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows that you're dead.)
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To: snarks_when_bored

I recall the FedGov's funding of a program at Duke Medical in the early eighties for growing mice tails back. I thought "What!?!?", but I see I was two decades blind.


73 posted on 09/01/2005 1:09:54 PM PDT by azhenfud (He who always is looking up seldom finds others' lost change.)
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To: Red Badger

Revelation 9:6 And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.


74 posted on 09/01/2005 1:16:06 PM PDT by UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide (Give Them Liberty Or Give Them Death! - IT'S ISLAM, STUPID! - Islam Delenda Est! - Rumble thee forth)
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To: UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide
Revelation 9:6 And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.

I always took that to mean the Angel of Death was on hiatus and taking it easy somewhere. Suicide would be impossible as would be murder. There would be no escape from the wrath of God............

75 posted on 09/01/2005 1:19:25 PM PDT by Red Badger (United States Marine Corps.....An army of WON!...........)
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To: HiTech RedNeck
Uh, evolution can't be "helped."

Sure it can. You're obviously ignorant of the techniques known by animal and plant breeders for thousands of years, which are all about "helping evolution".

76 posted on 09/01/2005 1:48:25 PM PDT by Ichneumon
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To: JustDoItAlways
Evolution and selection would have allowed this to occur in nature if it was as easy as the regulation of six genes. Tremendous survivability advantage and since we don't see it in nature for complex organisms, I don't believe these results.

It's possible that the exact combination of genetic changes necessary to make this possible were unlikely enough to occur together that the prior appearance of such an adaptation was unlikely to have occurred in the past. Some evolutionary "breakthroughs" have occurred once in the history of life on Earth precisely because they weren't of the kind that would occur several times in a few thousand generations.

But yeah, I'm skeptical too, for a number of reasons.

77 posted on 09/01/2005 1:54:35 PM PDT by Ichneumon
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To: Bernard Marx
How true. This age of Man playing at being God is more dangerous to the future of our species than any war, plague, famine or natural disaster in history.

That's what they said about the invention of lightning rods, and anesthetics, too.

Yes, really.

78 posted on 09/01/2005 1:55:47 PM PDT by Ichneumon
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To: forsnax5
The first thing that occurred to me was that they're building an unkillable mouse.

Seriously, that was pretty much the premise of this movie. A couple of researchers decide to test their new "regeneration" serum on a fresh corpse at the hospital. Just their bad luck it happened to be a psycho killer who had recently been shot by the police... Every time the Sheriff (played by Chuck Norris) tries to kill or incapacitate the psycho, he just regenerates the damage and keeps coming.

79 posted on 09/01/2005 1:59:44 PM PDT by Ichneumon
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To: Ichneumon

Don't forget pasteurization, immunization and (still a bone of contention among some Christian and Jewish sects) blood transfusions.


80 posted on 09/01/2005 1:59:44 PM PDT by RightWingAtheist (Creationism is not conservative!)
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