“Well, She Turned Me Into A Newt.”
Sir Bedevere: What makes you think she's a witch?
Peasant 3: Well, she turned me into a newt!
Sir Bedevere: A newt?
Peasant 3: [meekly after a long pause] … I got better.
Crowd: [shouts] Burn her anyway!
(Monty Python and the Holy Grail)
Scientists may one day turn people into newts to make them get better - sort of. Researchers have isolated a key protein that allows newts to regenerate lost appendages. They hope it will provide clues that might someday allow humans to regenerate lost limbs.
Biologists have long been intrigued by the ability of newts and salamanders to renew damaged body parts. But how they do it has been unclear.
Now new research by a British team published on Thursday shows that a protein called nAG, secreted by nerve and skin cells, plays a central role in producing a clump of immature cells, known as a blastema, which regrows the missing part.
The importance of nAG was demonstrated by the fact that even when a nerve was severed below the stump tip, which would normally prevent regrowth, the scientists were able to coax regeneration by artificially making cells produce the protein.
Anoop Kumar and colleagues from University College London (UCL), writing in the journal Science, said the finding "may hold promise for future efforts to promote limb regeneration in mammals."
David Stocum of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis said it could help explain why mammals have limited regrowth abilities and thus help direct the field of regenerative medicine.
A clear understanding of the molecular signals involved in blastema formation and limb regeneration could eventually allow medics to program similar patterns into cells of non-regenerating body parts.
It is a clever trick — but understanding how they do it does not mean humans will necessarily be able to copy them and regrow lost arms or legs, according to Jeremy Brockes of UCL.
There is no guarantee that this will ever come to anything, of course. But it is a fascinating research path.
Medicine, World news | Gaius Friday, 2 November , 2007
By sam, Friday, 2 November , 2007 @ 12:02 pm
You know what the first application of this will be. I can see the spam emails now. “You can be longer than ever before . . .”
By Chris, Friday, 2 November , 2007 @ 2:39 pm
All you have to do is cut it off first . . .