Human Regeneration Modeled After Salamanders
(4 votes, average: 3.5 out of 5)
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by Mike Zazaian September 22, 2006 - 1:00pm, 5 Comments
Photo by Steven Pinker
Amid a slew of soldiers left limbless in the wake of the Iraq war, Darpa is increasing research on techniques that might someday help people grow their own limbs back.
The effort will be set up as a contest. Two teams at 10 different research facilities across the country will compete to grow the first human limb by giving humans the same regenerative properties as salamanders and other amphibians. A $7.6 Million grant will fund the efforts, with more money on the way if the initial efforts of the project are a success.
A key difference between the growth of Humans and amphibians is the Blastema, a mass of cells that can turn into any number of body parts in amphibians. Unfortunately, blastemas are absent in the human genome, which is where Darpa steps in. According to Stephen Badylak, a team leader and director of the Center for Pre-Clinical Tissue Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh’s McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine:
We have to show we can do that in a mammal by 24 months — and by 48 months we have to show that we can actually regrow digits…This really is a Star Wars-type project.
Mammals are able to regenerate limbs during the fetal stage, but not thereafter. Amphibians on the other hand can regenerate several body parts if lost. Eyes, limbs, and even spinal cords are regrown if damaged or severed in amphibian bodies. Said Badylak:
We’re looking for what genes get turned on and off to make one regenerative and one not. We can regenerate as a fetus. We know the potential is there, but it’s a matter of unlocking that potential.
[via Wired]
im very excited at the possiblity of human regeneration even more so on one day the possibilty to regenerate anything in our body limbs, cells, tissue, anything!
callum easton
I know somebody that created a human clone with cells of salamander Vo1 transforming the human in regenerative, the regenerative human has the gallyogepsy name, that human it was done in the brazil on November 2007 on the 16, he drinks him/it lack this in a volunteer’s uterus it ties now it doesn’t present damages, and if everything gives serto gallyogepsy it will be destroyed, as the others that already forão. it lacks only 6 months for nacer gallyogepsy and I am communicating to you because trabalhuei with the Russian cientists that are in the brazil to test your creatures, say of the hell. I ask for help, that email be read by them I will be dead in at the most 1 day please helps
Peter
im 15 and i think human regeneration is plausable in so many ways. Think if we can get a live culture of Blastema to grow in the human body think of the possibilities we may stumble apon.
Danielle
i have been thinking about this and it could be possible.
i asked my science teacher and he said people are working on it but im one step ahead (for a 12 year old).
if in theory you mixed a lizards cells with human cells in theory we could regenerate after injurys etc
matthew doughty