How To Grow Human Limbs
“Amputees could regenerate limbs and organs thanks to scientists who have come close to discovering how salamanders grow back lost legs. The amphibians seem to form limbs from cells that partly remember how to make bone, muscle, or nerve tissue, researchers have found. But exactly how the Mexican salamanders – called ‘axolotls’ or ‘water monsters’ – do this is still a mystery, according to a report in the journal Nature. ‘How this is achieved in the salamander and why it does not occur in mammals remains an important question,’ Elly Tanaka of the Centre for Regenerative Therapies in Dresden, Germany, and colleagues reported.
‘It gives you more hope for being able to someday regenerate individual tissues in people,’ Malcolm Maden of the University of Florida, who worked on the study, said in a statement. ‘If you can understand how they regenerate, then you ought to be able to understand why mammals don’t regenerate.” w/ photo
