Rat Limb Grown in the Lab

Posted by Zenphamy 8 years, 9 months ago to Science
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Now this is a true game changer. Can you imagine?

From the article:
"When electrically stimulated, the muscle fibers contracted with a strength 80 percent of what would be seen in newborn animals. What’s more, the blood vessels filled with blood.

“We have shown that we can maintain the matrix of all of these tissues in their natural relationships to each other, that we can culture the entire construct over prolonged periods of time, and that we can repopulate the vascular system and musculature,” said Harald Ott, MD, of the MGH Department of Surgery and the Center for Regenerative Medicine and senior author of the research paper, which appeared in this week’s journal Biomaterial."

God, I love science and research.
SOURCE URL: http://news.discovery.com/tech/biotechnology/rat-limb-grown-in-the-lab-150604.htm


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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 8 years, 9 months ago
    A few of our new hires at FIT and I are working on very similar tissue engineering projects involving small blood vessels, bone engineering, and the tendon/bone interface. One of my students just submitted an article yesterday to the same journal. Biomaterials is a fascinating journal. A friend of mine and I took a Field of Dreams approach to starting a new Biomedical Engineering Department a few years ago. We built it, and in just a few years, that department has really blossomed. The success of that program is probably the biggest reason I haven't totally shrugged and may very well shrug in place. Going to work is a fun new challenge almost every day. Unlike all the other engineering disciplines, most of the big problems have not been solved yet in biomedical engineering, but the field doubles every 5-10 years!
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  • Posted by johnpe1 8 years, 9 months ago
    this is amazing! . I need one of these to kick-start me
    in the morning!!! -- j
    .
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    • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 9 months ago
      You need a kick from a 3D printed limb?
      or
      You need a good news tidbit?

      I am having a good time imagining a disembodied leg chasing you around the house every morning, trying to boot you in the butt.

      Jan, entertained
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      • Posted by 8 years, 9 months ago
        The Hand. One of the very first horror movies I saw in the late 50's. A cutoff hand that was alive and crept up on people.
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        • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 9 months ago
          UHHh. I remember that - could not sleep for 3 nights. My parents blasted my elder sister out for watching it.

          I think that movie is one of the reasons I am 'spider adverse'...

          Jan
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          • Posted by 8 years, 9 months ago
            I had hands everywhere, creeping over the back of the couch, under the bed, through the window, under the foot of the blanket. And I despise spiders.
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            • Posted by khalling 8 years, 9 months ago
              Non mooch hates spiders too. I 'll keep spiders if I can make snakes go away.....also scorpions
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              • Posted by 8 years, 9 months ago
                Now snakes and scorpions are going just too far. A large part of my family's from McDonald County, MO which in the early and mid 1800's was known as 'Snake County' to everyone that had been there. The scorpions and big black and orange centipedes were just as bad. Now I'm going to have nightmares again. I just hope it's not that damn hand.
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              • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 9 months ago
                I will trade you: I will take the snakes if you take the spiders. Neither of us want the scorpions.

                (Killed a rattlesnake over the weekend. A friend of mine cooked it (Since I was working on a dog-run/chicken-coop project; I had killed it outside her front door, and she cut its head off with garden shears.) - she barbecued it. She says that next time she will use oil instead of a dry rub since it is wild meat. It was better than the last rattlesnake I killed, which was skinny and stringy, but I think she is right about the oil. The builder who was with us when this happened was rather bemused.)

                Jan, likes snakes...sometimes sauteed
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  • -1
    Posted by woodlema 8 years, 9 months ago
    So a Rat limb was “Grown” in a lab. Wonderful accomplishment for the intelligent scientists that no doubt spent many, many years learning and developing the technology to do this.
    The potential is staggering.
    Now for my point. With all the chat I have seen over “No God”, and that “Big Bang” and “Evolution” caused all this, why don’t rats, automatically grow limbs back when severed? Why don’t people?
    I am surprised that these limbs did not just evolve out of nothing all by themselves with scientists standing around saying WOW look how that evolved.
    Universe and all life, and EVERYTHING with its intricacies and infinite complexities coupled with the TOTAL precision makes the Universe an incalculably value higher in complexity than all the efforts put into growing a rat limb, and people still have the audacity to think there is no intelligent design in our universe.
    May as well take a comment from Obama toward the scientists. “You did not build that!!!”
    Hence it must have evolved meaning these scientists were never needed or required to complete this.
    Every time I see major scientific advancement, my Belief in God is even further solidified, for if our universe was not Created by intelligence, then everything man does, man gets no credit since it must have simply evolved from nothing, simply because it “needed” to exist.
    To oversimplify this. 0 + 0 = 0. Zero * anything is still Zero.
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    • Posted by $ Thoritsu 8 years, 9 months ago
      Considerably more accomplishment than reading a book your parents told you to, and taking completely unsupported supernatural actions as gospel. Then backing into it being unerringly correct even though the basic text is filled with errors and centuries late human editorials. Yep, better than that.

      Notice the first mention of god is yet again from someone living in terror that the next facts will further demonstrate the scientific basis of magic.
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    • Posted by 8 years, 9 months ago
      Your comment is an insult to rational and reasoning minds and all the advances in health and human life they've allowed in the last century or so.

      This is warning 1 for highjacking a post.
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      • Posted by woodlema 8 years, 9 months ago
        Nobody was hijacking anything.

        I think Scientific advances are wonderful, and to be lauded. Cloning, Stem Cells, all those things that intelligent scientists who study their entire lives to create is splendid. These advances however did not EVOLVE!!! They were created and designed.

        The possibilities for you to have your own heart clones or grown for replacement in the event of heart disease, provides opportunities people only thought of in science fiction 20 years ago. 20 years ago they would have called you unreasonable and lunatic crazy for even suggesting this could be done.

        Also your intolerance of other REASONABLE opinions by implying I am not rational and reasonable is, well shall we say, not a very open minded, and a bit dogmatic and reminiscent of other cultures that display excessive levels of intolerance for other views.
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        • Posted by 8 years, 9 months ago
          No, I'm not intolerant. I have a rule on my posts that going off thread on my Posts, I will give two warnings, then hide future comments.

          If you wish to talk about supernatural phenomena somehow demonstrated by science, please do so on your own posts. This post concerns the significant accomplishment of some scientists using knowledge of scientific reality and scientific experiments confirming that reality to advance the knowledge and abilities of man.

          This is strike two.
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