Regenerating rodents

http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=20
Summary: The Wistar Institute has found that MRL mice regenerate removed tissue completely with no scar tissue formation. This apparently works for all tissues except the brain. Implantation of MRL mice cells in normal mice confers the ability as well.

Press Release from the Wistar Institute (http://www.wistar.org/news_info/pres...pr_8.9.01.html): There is little or no evidence of scarring in the healed tissue. "Similar injuries to the heart tissue of control mice, for example, showed that only 1 to 3 percent of the heart cells in the region of the injury were capable of dividing. In the MRL mice, however, up to 20 percent of the heart cells divided in response to injury." Research is currently investigating genetic differences between MRL and normal mice.

Now, if that could be applied to humans...

It would be interesting to see whether or not these genes that the MRL mice carry for the higher regenerative abilities increase the risks of uncontrolled cell-growth aka cancer....

It's closer to removing limiters than adding new abilities. The genes that suppress the division do so solely to prevent cancer; it's reasonable to assume that cancer rates would increase significantly.

It would be difficult to port to humans, because we are missing about 8-12 of the gene segments that are needed.

Wow, this is amazing. Bleeding heart healing, never heard of such thing in the mammals. If its removing limiters could it possibly be some disease (that spread through by blood)? Still, that gives humanity another weapon for the soldiers.

before you'll even expect it. scientist will be splicing some mice dna with kids ...... hmm "Ratman" @_@

on a side note. I rather have those reptilian regenerating ability rather than that of a mice. but I guess its better mammals with mammals =_=

Regeneration is nice, too bad the number of possible regenerations is limited.

Maybe regeneration will eliminate the sensation of pain because pain warns of body to threats to it existance and if people can regenerate there is no threat. No pain! Wouldn't that be interesting.

I think LordMelkor is right. Cancer would be spreading 5 times faster (or even faster) than normal. But it sounds really interesting to be able to lose a finger and just regrow it :) . But there are several drawbacks in such regeneration abilities. For example if you have an regenerating army and the enemy doesnt, then u just have to get some cellls from the regenerating army and implant them in your army. Then u wait a few months and you got a regenerating army too ...
Another drawback would be UV-Light. It causes cell mutations to happen much more often and you could use UV emitting lights vs regenerating soldiers and they all die to cancer or other mutations...
Maybe that regeneration gene also has defect parts and some part of your body partially stops functioning, because those genes arent able to do that function...

in other words, if it went even SLIGHTLY wrong, you'd end up with three arms and six testicles.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by glass_eye

It's closer to removing limiters than adding new abilities. The genes that suppress the division do so solely to prevent cancer; it's reasonable to assume that cancer rates would increase significantly.

It would be difficult to port to humans, because we are missing about 8-12 of the gene segments that are needed.

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Really? I would really like to know where and how you came about this information. According to my current knowledge of genetics, no matter how limited it presently is, I've learnt that each species contain various amounts of chromosomes, meaning that a species with, let's say, 23 chromosomes has less chromosomes than a human, but more genetic information one a single chromosome. So, with this knowledge, among other facts, we can not really say that a human is absent of a segment of chromosomes, relative to mice. Rather, it is more accurate to say that the gene responsible for regeneration, although active in such cellular tissues as skin tissue, is dormant, or inactive in other cells, such as the brain.