Illustration. Utter fantasy.
The photo above is the product of my imagination running a little wild, but as an enthusiastic science spectator, I reserve the right to allow my mind to drift to fantasy when the actual science is so spectacular.
In this case, the spectacular science news is that researchers were able to grow eyes on a frog (a tadpole actually) in places on its body that don't usually grow eyes.
Being dazzled by regenerative medicine is not really new. Think of all the amazing things we've read about what can be done with stem cells. But I think the popular perception of stem cells is that they work by magic. How else would these undefined cells suddenly know what to grow into? Now, I'm not saying it's not magic, but if you want to know more specifically about how the spell is cast, the answer turns out to have to do with membrane voltage.
(Credit: Michael Levin and Sherry Aw)
Here's the actual image, just to keep things honest.
Scientists looked at how organs developed in growing tadpoles and also planarian flatworms, which are able to regenerate limbs. What they saw was different voltage associated with different organs.
So they looked at what would happen if they disrupted that voltage and sure enough, they got malformations. Researchers also figured out how to immitate the process to re-grow things that don't usually regrow (like a tadpole's tail after a certain point of development).
The new news is that they've gone so far as to use the technique to grow an organ where it doesn't usually grow.
"By using a specific membrane voltage, we were able to generate normal eyes in regions that were never thought to be able to form eyes. This suggests that cells from anywhere in the body can be driven to form an eye."
All this talk of voltage and cell electricity calls to mind images of Frankenstein and curly-wired electrodes attached to brains in jars, but that too is more for the fictionalized comic book version. What they really do is manipulate special proteins that allow charged particles into the cell. In this case, very early in the tadpole's development they introduced the means of changing a cell's membrane voltage. Eventually, through the course of the tadpole's growth, the affected cells turned up in different parts of the tadpole. In cases where the right cells ended up with the right voltage, the voltage triggered the cell's DNA to for the cell to grow into an eye, and the next thing you know you've got an eye on your back -- or something like that.
The full paper is not available for free, but I suspect the details would be over my head anyway. Senior and corresponding author of the paper, Dr. Michael Levin, however, has a bit more on the subject on his site if you're interested, and it's not impossibly technical.
Lastly, there's no better way to rain on the parade of an exciting science story than by reading the online forum discussions about it. People in this field of research see different news in this study than those of us who haven't been paying attention. The role of ions in regeneration is already known to scientists, as is the means through which those ions are channeled into cells. But for those of us who haven't been paying attention, holy crap! They grew an eye on a tadpole's back!
Any insights you have on when the science fiction and science fact of regenerative medicine will come into closer alignment are very welcome in the comments.
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Does this mean that science may eventually be able to give Dick Cheney a heart in a place where he has never had one before?
They already did! LOL
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/05/us/politics/05cheney.html
Now THAT, might actually kill him......LOL....
So it's gonna get harder to sneak up on frogs.
Yet another innocent pastime, destroyed by science!
Everyone knows that their parents have eyes in the back their heads so this experiment with animals is redundant.
I read Science Daily everyday. Trying to just track advances in any particular field is really difficult. Trying to keep track of all of the advances feels like surfing a Tsunami.
Stem cell research is exploding. So is basic cell research. Scientists are really getting down to the nuts and bolts of it.
As I was riding in an hospital elevator last week I was idly looking at the map that showed locations of the different medical departments. There was a Genetics Department.
I didn't know that was real world everyday hospital stuff. I thought that was just research. Who knew? I guess I just need to pay attention to staying on the surf board. Maybe I will visit the genetics Department and ask about some eyes for the back of my head, that might help.
Will, in regards to your question about the merging of science fiction with reality, science fiction fell behind reality quite a while ago. One only needs to read a little in the quantum feild to realize that not only is reality far stranger than any fiction, it is in fact far stranger than we can imagine.
Trying to be serious, which is kind of difficult, I wonder how the frog's brain is dealing with the extra nisual impute?
Do those eyes actually connect to the frog's brain?
Is the eye functional? There's lots of 'wiring' needed to interface the eye with the brain. Also, the brain would need a major reprogramming to interpret the signals from a 3rd (or 4th) eye. When it boils down to it, all we are is an infinitely long chain of electrochemical reactions.
From what I gather, the eye is complete as an organ, but not hooked up with nerves for actual seeing.
I get that this could be very useful! I also understand enough history to be able to see the "misuse & abuse" that can be done by the psycho's among US!!
As fascinating as the science is, I think it is abominable and generates the kind of karma that no sane person would entertain.
Tell that to people waiting for a liver transplant. And yes, I know one.
Lonny is right. It is an abomination, like all science and medicine. If you break a leg, just leave it alone. Get a sliver? Leave it in. We mustn't play god, so just lie down in a pool of your own slobber and passively wait for the end of everything.
If you can't tell that was sarcasm, you're beyond help.
Seriously, the benefits of this stuff are obvious. Like DC is saying, imagine all those people waiting for organ transplants. Why wait if a replacement can be grown out of your own body? Why give a soldier an artificial limb if they can be made to grow back?
teachers and parents could finally really have eyes in the back of their heads :)
AHHHHHH. OK that picture is going to give me nightmares.
As Jeff Goldblum intoned in Jurassic Park, "but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn't stop to think if they should."
Now if we could just grow flashlights...
Bioluminescent jelly fish should do the trick.
Fascinating.
This kind of thing is a common topic with my dentist -- it seems that tooth buds are one of the first replacement organs we've learned how to grow. Trouble is, so far all we can grow are molars -- and we still can't select which molars oriented how.
This may be an interesting topic to some of you younger than me, but I was born minus buds for three secondary teeth (did you know you could get by for more than 40 years with baby teeth?) and don't want to replace the bridges again. Plus, implants are much better than dentures but they're a long way from OEM quality.
Membrane Voltage? Ionic ain't it? Sorry 'bout that.
By the way Rachel, we know you just posted this to thumb your nose at the Creationists who swear that Science is evil. Next you will post an x-ray of your coccyx and explain how it used to serve a purpose.
I really don't think that TRMS would be improved by a little tail.
That's just unnecessarily freaky.
Energy healers have been using bio-electricity for centuries to heal people - glad to see the science community catching up.
Read _The Body Electric— by Robert O. Becker, who worked for the VA researching limb regeneration, and couldn't get grant funding to keep his lab together. Harold Saxon Burr was researching these small potentials in the 1930s and publishing in the Yale J. of Biology and Medicine. This story is of Political Science in the absolute worst sense of the phrase.
Genetics is going to fix a lot of things. Sharks don't get cancer. When we find the gene responsible for that we can alter our genes to do the same thing. The aging process comes from the breakdown of certain genes. We can stop the aging process if we can learn how to stop these genes from breaking down. Some animals can grow back limbs if they lose one. We can do the same thing if we can understand how it works in those animals. Imagine growing a new set of teeth. There really is no limit to what can be done genetically. It is one of my favorite science subjects.
The folk's concern over stem cells is misplaced since they should be screaming concern over the GMOs Monsanto has spread all over the world regarding the food we consume. When they shift to that issue, That would be a Great Day! Talk about manipulating special proteins, Monsanto has been manipulating more than that!
Here is your moment of Geek:
Published recently inside the UK ~
Monsanto & Other BioTech Giants Deeply Entrenched In US Politics
www.ukprogressive.co.uk
We are not even building laws to protect our selves like Labeling, therefore, we are unable to take the actions necessary to protect the world.
Bio-electricity is a much over-looked piece of the regeneration puzzle.
The most important thing that this work shows is that behind all the hype within the regenerative medicine space nowadays, regeneration is MUCH MORE than just stem cells.
Regeneration is a function of cells, matrices, morphogens, gradients, 3-D bio-mechanical forces, cell-cell paracrine interaction, nerve supply, vasculature, and, yes, bio-electricity signals.
Regeneration can not be reduced to individual components.