More On Regenerative Research
Via the LEF News, more media attention given to attempts to replicate the regenerative abilities of lower animals and a very few mammals: "Buoyed by recent genetic breakthroughs, researchers at Northwestern University and across the country have hopes of achieving a feat long thought to be impossible: enabling people to replace damaged body parts or even regrow missing limbs. ... All of a sudden, this becomes not so much science fiction but really a challenging science problem. This particular project to regrow digits and limbs on humans is kind of like saying we're going to go to the moon ... There is a transition in us humans where we go from a perfect wound healing phase through regeneration early on, to a later phase where scars begin to form. That means we probably also possess the appropriate genes to perfectly heal wounds without scars. And that's the idea my colleagues and I have - to see if we can find the regeneration switch and reactivate it in humans."