Evolutionarily speaking, we’ve done pretty well for ourselves, but there’s still room for improvement. There are amphibians living in nasty waters that have superpowers we can only dream of. Salamanders, for example, can regrow entire limbs, portions of their organs, and damaged tissue. The axolotl, that cute amphibian with a permanent smirk, is another that we can gain a superpower from.
According to research published in Nature Communications, scientists might finally understand salamander-style regeneration well enough to get mammals, and maybe eventually humans, closer to doing the same thing.
Humans can heal from injury, so the power to regenerate is within us, but researchers at Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences believe that we can be better at it. We are already equipped with the ability, but there might be a better version of healing already within us, waiting to be unlocked.
Scientists May Have Found a Way to Unlock Salamander-Style Regeneration in Mammals
Their study focused on epimorphic regeneration, the process salamanders use after amputation. First, skin cells quickly cover the wound. Then, nearby cells reorganize into a blastema, a temporary cluster of regenerative cells that acts like the blueprint and construction crew for rebuilding the missing limb.
Using a specially engineered serum, the researchers were able to encourage lab mice to form blastema structures instead of scar tissue. According to researcher Ken Muneoka, the process works in two stages: stop the body from rushing into scar formation, then provide chemical signals that tell cells which tissue to rebuild.
The best part is that we would need to harvest anything from an animal like a salamander, since the process doesn’t involve stem cells or some kind of futuristic biotech hardware. The cells needed for regeneration are already present in mammals. The researchers just found a way to alter their behavior.
It’s still a long way off before you can smear a little of this serum on a missing limb and expect a new arm in 4 to 6 weeks or whatever, but it does provide some hope that one day he can help us heal significantly faster than we used to.
The post Scientists Found a Way to Make Mammals Heal More Like Salamanders, Which Is Extremely Weird (And Promising) appeared first on VICE.
