Friday, July 3, 2009
Salamander to Man
Posted by Kandace Power Graves on Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 6:47 PM
There's some really cool research going on in the New Orleans medical community. Here's an example from Tulane University.
Inspired by a Mexican salamander’s ability to regenerate severed limbs, Tulane researchers will try to adapt that physiology to help injured humans. Tulane professor Ken Muneoka, the John L. and Mary Wright Ebaugh chair in science and engineering, won a $6.25 million, five-year grant from the U.S. Department of Defense. He will lead researchers from the University of California-Irvine and the University of Kentucky, who will seek to identify the genes that trigger regeneration in the salamander and see if they can duplicate the response in mice. They then plan to develop therapies using regeneration-promoting cells or growth factors to elicit a similar response in humans.
Muneoka says the team will establish a database of genes involved in the salamander’s regenerative abilities and use them as a blueprint for coordinating the genetic events required for limb regeneration in humans.
Speaking of...
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New Chinese-immersion kindergarten registration closes Friday
Area’s first Mandarin-immersion program in a public charter school opens in August.
- Jan 10, 2012
- More »
Comments (2)
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But, if you somehow implant this ability into humans, aren't you making a human-animal hybrid?
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That is the sticky wicket with that legislation. I guess it will all depend on whether the intent is to guard against Dr. Moreau-type experiments or whether they will try to outlaw all projects that mix human and animal genes and DNA, which could set science back eons.
