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Australian Science Makes the Regenerating Mouse
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu Sep 01, 2005 04:18 AM
from the cats-beware dept.
from the cats-beware dept.
FruFox writes "Australian scientists have created mice which can regenerate absolutely any tissue except for the tissues of the brain. Heart, lungs, entire limbs, you name it. This is the first time this has been seen in mammals. The potential implications are positively mammoth. I thought this warranted attention. :)"
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Start building better mousetraps! (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, it means we have to aim for the head when the monster-mice attack. Personally, I welcome our new genetically modified near-unkillable regenerative mice overlords.
That aside, I first thought they had made a computer mouse that generated power when moved á la regenerative braking in electrical cars.
And the good side is... (Score:5, Funny)
Finally, I small hope for the Republicans...
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Re:And the good side is... (Score:4, Funny)
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Does this mean... (Score:4, Funny)
I don't suppose (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I don't suppose (Score:4, Funny)
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Wrong countries (Score:5, Informative)
He's correct....US based (Score:5, Informative)
A search for the researchers name comes up with her working at Penn State, in the good ol' U.S.A.
"Heber-Katz, who is also an adjunct professor in the pathology and laboratory medicine department at Penn's School of Medicine, now devotes about 80 percent of her time to mapping the gene loci that confer these unique regeneration properties and analyzing their patterns of expression."
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Re:Wrong countries (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, true, but the linked article was in an Australiam newspaper. That makes it an Australiam discovery, based on the little known "mention us in print and it's ours" clause of the Aus-US free trade agreement.
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Re:Wrong countries (Score:5, Funny)
No, the slashdot title sayd Australian science, while the summary says Australiam scientists.
Obviously this was a New Zealander who submitted this, pretending to be an Australian to make us all look stupid.
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Re:Wrong countries (Score:5, Funny)
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amazing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:amazing (Score:5, Informative)
In theory yes -- most birth defects have no genetic basis (that's why "thalidomide babies" have perfectly normal children themselves) -- it isn't the information in their DNA that is damaged but rather the fact that their cells were misassembled during development in the womb.
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Re:amazing (Score:4, Interesting)
Is there some nasty side effect that makes it better to NOT have this ability and put up with loss of limbs, and other damage?
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Re:amazing (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:amazing (Score:5, Insightful)
There is another mechanism for dealing with major injuries: development of scar tissue. Scaring happens much faster and takes fewer resources than regeneration. There appears to be an anti-correlation between scaring and regeneration: animals that scar don't regenerate and vice-versa, so there may be some overloading of the genes that control both processes, making them mutually incompatible.
Given that survivable loss of limbs and survivable loss of internal organs is a relatively rare occurence for most mammals, it is likely that scaring has been favoured over regeneration in our evolutionary history as it is the mechanism that gives injured organisms the greatest chance of survival.
In particular, mammals lead active lives because we are warm blooded, and therefore need to hunt/scavange/forage regularly for food to keep our body temperature stable. This means that rapid healing is a big advantage, so scaring is favoured. Modern reptile are cold-blooded, and therefore can sustain much longer periods without food, making them more able to take the time out of their busy schedule to regenerate.
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Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Finally! (Score:4, Funny)
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Mouseman (Score:5, Funny)
Do i get the amazing ability to pee all over the place and crawl into small spaces?
Or do i need to irradiate it first?
Zombie mice! (Score:5, Funny)
Not to be fearful again, but ahem, do we really need mammals that can only be killed by headshots? Don't these guys ever learn from zombie movies? Think of the CHILDREN!!! I guess it's time to zip over to S-Mart and grab a shotgun, because I KNOW some mouse will sooner or later BITE one of the scientists and then all hell breaks loose.
Anyone seen Bruce Campbell lately? We might need him.
Oversights (Score:5, Informative)
The lab responsible is in the US not Australia, even though the report comes from The Australian. The paper isn't that parochial, you know.
Also, it sounds like a serendipitous discovery rather than intentional creation. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
As the work doesn't appear to have been published yet, my guess is that it will turn out to be a bit less remarkable than it currently sounds.
Re:Oversights (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, now all future regenerating mice, and possibly all future regenerating people are going to have the genes of perhaps one single originator mouse....
<chant>We believe in one mouse, the rejuvenator all mighty - progenitor of mankind on earth...</chant> Praise be to squeaky.
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Serendipity, followed by hard work (Score:5, Insightful)
As my old high-school physics teacher used to say, the Princes of Serendip paid that lab a visit. Luck got the ball rolling, but hard work made it into something with potential. It took an observant, inquiring mind to note that the ear holes were closing, and to choose to investigate it further. Fortune favors the prepared mind, especially in science.
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Old news and not from Australia!?! (Score:4, Informative)
So what makes this new or Australian?
What does this say about evolution? (Score:5, Interesting)
I can only surmise that for complex creatures, self-regeneration is not only worthless, but is undesirable (since no complex creatures seem to have self-regeneration but many less complex creatures do). This, of course applies to complex creatures as a species anyways. I think I'd find it extremely valuable for myself.
I don't know the answer but perhaps it has to do with the thinking aspect of complex creatures and how that affects mating. I'd be interested in hearing others hypothesize about this.
Not completely (Score:5, Interesting)
The competing pressures might include (for example) a pressure to be smart or strong enough not to lose body parts in the first place, or a pressure to develop coping strategies when a limb is lost. Or the pressure to give food and resources to offspring, over attempting immortality. Or the pressure to have more complex tissues (even if they are more difficult to regenerate), although the article sheds a shadow of doubt on this last one. If these competing pressures are great enough, and more importantly, the pressure to keep the regeneration trait is low enough, the trait will simply drift away (randomly mutate) into nonfunctional genetic code. It doesn't mean it is completely undesirable.
More "complex" animals like humans don't lose a lot of body parts on a day to day basis. And those who do, have their (evolutionary) fitness determined by their ability to cope with the loss, rather than by their ability to regain those parts.
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Cancer rate increase? (Score:5, Informative)
This will be very interesting to see what happens. growing a new kidney, or hand would be great, as long as it is safe.
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Re:What does this say about evolution? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:What does this say about evolution? (Score:5, Interesting)
Lizards and "regenerating" reptiles generally don't generate scar tissue. Instead, in response to an injury their body slowly regrows the damaged part.
Mammals, on the other hand, prioritise closing the wound to prevent infection - we very quickly form scar tissue which effectively blocks the wound to infection, but also prevents regrowing the damaged part.
I always understood this was an evolutionary adaptation, but I've never worked out why mammals apparently have so much more to fear from infection than reptiles - is it something to do with our relative complexity, or is it a warm-blooded/cold-blooded thing?
Either way, with our longer lifespans, greater ability at saving individuals with serious injuries and our modern disinfectants and antibiotics, I'd be prepared to swap a slight increase in infectability for the ability to regenerate any wound short of a headshot!
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Re:What does this say about evolution? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Mice are using us humans... (Score:5, Funny)
The cats are ecstatic... (Score:4, Funny)
Great... (Score:5, Funny)
Welcome to the intellectual dead zone (Score:4, Insightful)
However it is at he University of Pennsylvania (U Penn), which I believe is a different school from Penn State which one person posted.
Google: Ellen Heber-Katz Wistar
You will note that a genome screen was conducted at some point in time finding genes on 5 different chromosomes involved in wound healing and regeneration. The regeneration takes place by a mass of cells forming at the wound site that can form into many different tissue types, i.e. like stem cells. Indeed it seems (from a cursory scan of a few links) that stem cells injected into other mice also work. And this facility can be inherited.
There is related research going on in different areas including observation of self-healing optical nerves, heart muscle, and even spinal cord once the scar tissue and scarring agents if that's what they are saying, are cleared away.
It is being reported at a conference in a week but already Nature and other publications seem to be involved at least in the past. Wistar is famous for vaccine development too.
If someone with real knowledge in the field could pop in now I'd sure appreciate it.
I can say one more thing. Humans can regenerate to a very limited extent already. I know because my mother chopped off the tip of her finger in a folding chair (shiver) when she was little. The tip grew back with the nail, though I'm not sure if a joint actually grew back the way these mice did.
The point is scientists never believed regeneration was possible even with such evidence, then views turned around, and now we have finally gotten to this amazing milestone. It is not an instantaneous thing. There is a paper cited about heart regeneration in the MRL mouse in 2002. They found the "healer" mouse in 1998. But it seems a milestone has obviously been met and it sounds like things are going to accelerate if more people can start working on the gene functions and biochemistry involved.
Heber Katz' talk [cam.ac.uk]
will be given on Sept. 7 at Queens' College in Cambridge, England. The whole conference sounds very interesting, it would be nice if someone with a brain and some training could report on it to slashdot.
Re:unacceptable! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:unacceptable! (Score:4, Insightful)
In the second case, it only permits more extreme piercings...
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Re:unacceptable! (Score:4, Interesting)
If you then take out the piercing, the hole will generally slowly close up, until it's eventually absorbed back into your body and disappears.
So yes, the wound does "heal" (in the sense of "closing the hole") when you take the piercing out (sometimes earlier, like eyebrow piercings which frequently grow out even with the jewellery left in).
However, the actual open wound (in the sense of a hole into your body, not all the way through it) generally heals within a few days or months (depending what you get pierced) of first getting it done.
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Re:unacceptable! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:unacceptable! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:unacceptable! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:finally (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:finally (Score:5, Insightful)
So they lose one tidy little market. So what? You don't think that the potential market in pro-regeneration drugs (and other drugs used during these sorts of surgeries) looks the least bit enticing, and potentially even MORE lucrative, than anti-rejection drugs? If they have ten to fifteen (or more) years, don't you think they will conduct studies left and right and get with the times? Pharmaceutical companies are not exactly the recording industry, they have some smart people working there...
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Re:finally (Score:5, Interesting)
This may save my life personally.
I have slow, chronic kidney failure, originally caused by an over-active immune system. Now that it is damaged, each bit of protein I eat kills a portion of my Kidney, even if it is tofu protein. Eat no protein = starve to death.
I am currently trying to eat a minimal amount of protein each day (40 grams), but is very tough to stay on my diet and even if I do this, my kidney still gets worse just slower.
Luckily with this diet I still have time, possibly even 10 years till total kidney failure (assuming I don't drink, etc. etc). With any luck, they will either have gotten this to work or found a way to at least clone a kidney for me.
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Re:Obviously (Score:5, Insightful)
(Presuming governments try and withhold the technology).
People will die in mass over population if the government give us this technology.
People will die in riots if the government give us the technology but try to control over population with laws controling birth rights
It at time like this I wish I hadn't read Kim Stanley Robinson's 'Red Mars' series.
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Military interest (Score:5, Insightful)
Though in this case I reckon the Military could get very in this kind of 'medicine'. Imagine an army of self healing soldiers. Get a leg blown off and then grow it back.
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Re:Skepsis? (Score:5, Insightful)
... And, being a Murdoch rag, it's not particularly well respected, either. I find the Sydney Morning Herald [smh.com.au], aka the Sadly Moaning Horrid, to be a better paper all round, even if it does have a habit of riding particular bandwagons until the wheels fall off (*coughReneRivkincough*).
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Think Highlander (Score:4, Funny)
Think about it, the Immortals cannot have children, they can heal from any wound, and they can only be killed by being beheaded.
Maybe the lines between fact & fiction might be getting a little blurrier...
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Because of evolutionary advantages to death (Score:4, Insightful)
Where do you think we'd be if older people who are stuck in their ways and have power and authority stuck around for longer, and retained their powerful positions?
There are advantages in replacing old minds with fresh young ones who challenge the old perspectives. We love children for a reason.
That is facilitated by death, and also by crippling injuries both physical and mental.
These advantages are particularly obvious in our human social structures - for the time being, anyway. As an example, in the recent article about computers automatically learning language grammars, there was an interesting comment that linguistics won't move on until Chomsky dies... There's some truth to that in all of science, politics, etc.
Complex social evolution does not necessarily favour health for all individuals.
An interesting corollary to that hypothesis is that there exist changes to the structures of society, and changes to the structures in which we propagate knowledge and learning and questioning, and changes to the way we collectively think, which would adjust evolutionary pressures to favour greater individual health, particularly including the expression of long-evolved genes which we're carrying already but not using, like those involved in tissue regeneration and dare I say it, longevity.
-- Jamie
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Re:Karma (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:What's a Jewish boy to do? (Score:4, Insightful)
All joking aside there are quite a few people, myself included, who would welcome the chance to replace the aforementioned parts since they were removed without our permission.
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