Scientists Regrow Chicken Wing 124
An anonymous reader writes "Unlike salamanders and lizards, most animals have lost the ability to replace missing limbs. But a research team in San Diego has been able to regenerate a wing in a chick embryo — a species not known to be able to regrow limbs — suggesting the potential for such regeneration exists innately in all vertebrates, including humans." From the article: "Manipulating Wnt signaling in humans is, of course, not possible at this point, Belmonte says, but hopes that these findings may eventually offer insights into current research examining the ability of stem cells to build new human body tissues and parts. For example, he said Wnt signaling may push mature cells go back in time and 'dedifferentiate' into stem-like cells, in order to be able to then differentiate once more, producing all of the different tissues needed to build a limb."
Deevolution? (Score:1)
Re:Deevolution? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Deevolution? (Score:5, Interesting)
With a reptile or amphibian, the wounded individual can afford to lose the weeks or more of downtime while their wounds or missing limbs regenerate. With a mammal or bird, the constant need for food to fuel a warm blooded metabolism wouldn't give a wounded individual time to heal in the same fashion; instead of regeneration, we scar instead. To use an technological metaphor, mammals slap a patch on the wound for faster recovery, while reptiles take the time to do a thorough repair job.
In any case, in the wild complete loss of limb would almost always be fatal for a mammal (barring infection or blood loss, you might live long enough to starve to death), so faster, incomplete healing via scarring is going to be good enough for most of the injuries we'd have a chance to recover from. We trade the ability to recover fully for the ability to recover quickly.
Today of course we no longer die as easily from our wounds, or from the inability to fend for ourselves after being crippled, so we have a vested interest in reworking this process. If we could induce regeneration in amputees for example, we could put them in a hospital for however long it takes to grow back and regain the use of their limbs - something we never could have done in our evolutionary history.
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Re:Deevolution? (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, in reality it probably isn't a clear cut either/or scenario, but more likely a spectrum ranging from one extreme to the other (faster healing versus complete healing). In that sense, we do regenerate (our wounds heal, don't they?), we just don't regrow lost limbs, or heal without permanent marks.
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This isn't really good news for us, because it means that we can't just reactivate the original genes. They aren't there any more; they've been modifie
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Lizards on the other hand probably had a different evolutionary environment where regeneration lead to an increase in survival.
Then again, I'm a business student so chances are I'm wrong
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Is that what they teach you in business school?
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Truthfully, they do actually teach you how to ensure that your accounts are never wrong in the first year accounting unit I took. A whole lecture was devoted to what they called "Creative Accounting". Covered various nasty tricks to ensure that your books balanced the way management dictated they balance. All legal of course
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Alternatively, it could simply not have been useful enough for the early mammals and birds. Selection pressure only applies to things that increase your ability to reproduce. (Survive to reproductive age, find a mate, and produce viable offspring.) And if, say, flight or fur proved to be more advantageous than regenerating a tail,
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Regeneration in mice (Score:5, Interesting)
The missing ear holes confused her research at the time, but the phenomenon launched a whole new career for Katz.
She and her colleagues wanted to find out if other parts of these mice, known as the MRL strain, would also regenerate. So they performed some tests: They snipped off the tip of a tail, severed a spinal cord, injured the optic nerve and damaged various internal organs.
All of the injuries healed, even the severed spinal cord. The results caused Heber-Katz to shift her research from autoimmune disease to regenerative medicine.
Now, thanks to Darpa's call for grant applications in regeneration, scientists all over the country from various disciplines are working together on the MRL mouse...
More at http://www.wired.com/news/technology/medtech/0,71
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Sounds like the script of a Tarantino movie...
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Sounds like the script of a Tarantino movie...
Kill Bill meets Resident Evil! Everyone knows you have to shoot those mice IN THE BRAIN so that they die...
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Responding to your entire post would raise my blood pressure way too high... but I can hit this part up real quick. 'Cancer' isn't one disease, or even one class of disease - like the common cold, or the flu, there's not one cure because it varies so much from type to type.
Re:Deevolution? (Score:5, Interesting)
In coding, each feature has a cost associated with it. Nothing is free. A feature will result in the combination of one or more of the following: more design/coding time, higher memory use, more CPU use, a higher chance of bugs, etc.
Evolution is the same.
For some creatures, the advantages are outweighed by the disadvantages.
For other creatures, the disadvantages are outweighed by the advantages. For many creatures, perhaps regenerating the limb isn't that useful -- the biology of the animal might mean that the loss of a limb is general fatal due to blood loss or infection (assuming the animal survives the accident/attack, which may be unlikely).
In addition, just because a feature may be a net advantage for a creature doesn't mean that it will magically appear. Genetic mutation is a crapshoot. Regeneration might have been perfected after the split from the decendents of other animals. Or perhaps the common ancestor of (say) salamanders and mammals was capable of generation, but after the split happened, regeneration had too high of a cost for the line that lead to mammals, and the genetic code was lost or adapted for some feature that was more useful.
I hope that explanation helps.
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I posit that regeneration is not a selective advantage for most vertebrates. If a "feature" does not have the net result of fostering [more] progeny, then it is not a selective advantage. If a proto-chicken loses a wing or a leg in the wild, it's gonna die *long* before it grows back and benefits from the regrowth. He
Re:Deevolution? (Score:5, Informative)
Emphasis mine. Just because we don't know what "junk DNA" is for doesn't mean it's not useful. When we manage to build a cell without junk DNA and have it work perfectly, we'll be able to prove that there's no use to it. It might even just be there for padding, like the polystyrene pellets in a box. Just because you throw them out right away doesn't mean there's no use to them - they protect what you really needed to protect inside the box. The more junk you have, the more likely that mutation is going to happen in a "junky" area rather than the genes you actually need...
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Researchers are starting to point this out.
A recent example: The sequencing of the DNA of the domestic chicken found a 20,000-base-pair "non-coding" (i.e., "junk") sequence that is very nearly identical with a sequence in human DNA. For such a long sequence to be preserved is highly unlikely unless it has a strong adaptive advantage. We don't have any idea what it does, but the only reasonable conclusion is that it's very impo
Scarring (Score:1, Interesting)
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Doctor Connors [wikipedia.org], anyone?
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Because there's not much advantage to growing back a limb when you've already been eaten. This also makes it rather hard to pass your genes on... Consider a bird that has lost a wing. How likely is this animal to survive a second attack by a predator? The same applies to a quadruped with 3 legs. Or a fish with a missing fin.
The lizards are an exception. Losing their tail is a distraction to the preda
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Once we figure out better ways to control cancer outbreaks in our cells, amazing opportunities to manipulate our bodies will become available to us.
Understanding and controlling cancer is the key to everything.
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I can see it now (Score:5, Funny)
For when just one heart bypass won't do.
*mmmmm neverending chicken wings*
Re:I can see it now (Score:5, Funny)
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Sliding scale (Score:5, Informative)
From TFA:
Turn it down to 0 and you eventually die of old age. Turn it up to 11 and you die of cancer. If the human equivalent can be found we may have a whole class of very old people who debate ways of achieving the right balance.
If something like this is under trial in 20 years or so I will definitely be giving it a go.
That's pretty damned cool... (Score:2, Funny)
Hmm... (Score:1)
and somewhere in the distance... (Score:3, Funny)
Hooters (Score:2, Funny)
No global warming: Oil Companies
Pirate DVDs fund terrorists: MPAA
Now we have the Salk Institute, not 5 minutes drive from a Hooters, searching the endless source of chicken wings.
Shameful.
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What do we have that is more than 5 minutes drive from a Hooters? Hell, even churches and universities are usually within a 5 minute drive of a Hooters.
LK
Regenerating Chicken Wings? (Score:2)
So how long... (Score:2)
This is a good start (Score:2, Funny)
Scientific flap? (Score:1)
What happened to the scientists' original wing, and how did they grow one on themselves?
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Nerves? (Score:2)
Is that list supposed to be everything that's needed or did he just stop enumerating? Because TFA doesn't mention nerves and if they hook up properly at the point where the nerves were severed; I'm not sure I'd rather have a new limp arm than no arm at all.
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New spam subject lines (Score:5, Funny)
Re:New spam subject lines (Score:5, Funny)
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Hurray for hentai! [animeondvd.com]
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Off-topic, but this reminds me of the old story of the head of Vecna [users.tkk.fi]...
I for one foresee... (Score:1)
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I would like to complain. I purchased your product and followed the instructions exactly.
Something is growing back, but it appears to be taking the shape of a chicken wing...
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Look on the bright side, this might give a whole new meaning to "oral sex". Now tell me, does your girlfriend prefer hot and spicy, honey mustard, or standard buffalo flavor?
The Black Night says... (Score:3, Funny)
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(hint: black knight)
yummy! (Score:3, Funny)
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Beer is never sold. Only rented...
Most importantly (Score:2, Insightful)
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"Mornin'," sa
Where's the Blue Cheese? (Score:1)
its a start (Score:1)
*ducks*
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obligatory. (Score:2)
KFC Makes Breakthrough (Score:2)
Seriously? (Score:2, Interesting)
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If you
Weird Opening (Score:2)
Unlike salamanders and lizards, most animals have lost the ability to replace missing limbs.
So salamanders and lizards are not animals now? What are they then? Bacteria? People? Aliens?
U think the submitter meant some reptiles and amphibians here.
Becker Again (Score:1)
I hate to keep harping on this - the reason I do is because the man's research was so profound and he was sooooo screwed over by the establishment.
In The Body Electric [amazon.com], Robert Becker describes how he was able to induce blastema [wikipedia.org] formation to re-knit bone fractures.
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Yep we were screwed as well by the lack of support for his research...
He reports in chapter seven of the same book of the observation of surgeon Cynthia Illingworth that a child of less than about 11 years old whose fingertip is severed beyond the outermost crease of the outmost joint will invariably regrow perfectly in around 3 months.
Looks like we humans already have some of this ability but it goes wrong around or just before puberty(my guess as to when).
It seems inextricably intertwined with cancer
Obligatory Simpsons Quote (Score:2)
This is a great news! (Score:1)
I would like to place a pre-order (Score:2)
now if we can get... (Score:1)
God can not regrow limbs, science can! (Score:1, Flamebait)
Religion == fantasy, science == reality.
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Dr. Connors (Score:2)
At least the pubs will be happy (Score:1)
Too late for one... (Score:1)
I thought... (Score:1)
John Bobbit is sleeping well these days (Score:1)
Good! (Score:2)
Multiple wings? (Score:1)