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Our closest worm kin regrow body parts, raising hopes of regeneration in humans

washington.edu

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Re: Our closest worm kin regrow body parts, raising hopes of regeneration in humans

#161

Post by abledon »

marvy wrote: post #159
abledon wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its more about the strength and quality rather than the quantity. As we get older the quality reduces with the rate depending on our genes, lifestyle, habits etc... Children in general, have better qi because they are 'new'. I'm not going to go into the scientific details here and start listing off pubmed studies, but its all in that book if your interested (many references at the end of each chapter). I'm sorry the…

> I would love to know why Sorry for late response. The entire blurb on Amazon gives off a mildly pseudo-science vibe, but it is mild enough that I was willing to forgive it. But this I could not overlook: "[...] how the hearts of two people in love (or in scientific terms `quantum entanglement') truly beat as one" Just no. I don't know quantum mechanics, but I know enough to say that can't possibly be anywhere near…

Ah yes, so, similar to how womens' periods synchronize up when they live together...Studies of couples show that when in a state of rapport, of emotional empathy, heart rates become matched and that they become mismatched when out of rapport: http://www.futurity.org/heart-beats-sync-up-in-romantic-coup...

Yeah I would probably not take that quote 'Truly beat as one' literally, I mean, I'm betting the heart rates in the study aren't as precise as to say... a distributed real-time system written in go /joke :)

Re: Our closest worm kin regrow body parts, raising hopes of regeneration in humans

#162

Post by PeterisP »

chei0iaV wrote: post #149
PeterisP wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For large animals, I'd believe that it's very rare to have non-fatal injuries that are large enough where regeneration would make a big difference to future life. According to evolution (which hasn't yet noticed medicine), if something rips off your foot, that's not an injury, you simply bleed to death or die of infection even if you win the fight - unlike, say, various small regenerating lizards. What selective pres…

> if something rips off your foot, that's not an injury, you simply bleed to death or die of infection That's a false premise. Plenty of (four-legged) animals can survive just fine without a leg - in fact, it's often said that animals have a spare leg. Some animals might even gnaw their own leg off it's stuck in something and they can't get it out.

It's kind of correlated with size - the smaller the animal is, the easier it is to survive after losing a limb. For a horse, even a broken leg is likely to be fatal.

A missing foot is survivable for a lynx much more so than for a human in the absence of modern medical care.

The same applies for evolutionary pressure in the case of hypothetical regeneration. A lizard can take ~2 months to regenerate a limb, for a human it would take longer simply since the limb is larger and needs to grow more. Prehistoric humans and hominids were calorie limited - if an injured individual is capable and likely to (a) survive for e.g. half a year with the injury and (b) to obtain much more calories than normal to rebuild many pounds of tissue, then apparently there is no strong evolutionary pressure to favor regeneration it as he/she is capable of procreating almost as well even without this feature.

Re: Our closest worm kin regrow body parts, raising hopes of regeneration in humans

#163

Post by PeterisP »

Grishnakh wrote: post #28
meric wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And perhaps some people might risk the chance of cancer to grow their body parts back.

Perhaps it could be turned on and off as needed: lose a finger in an accident, and take a drug to turn regeneration on. Grow your finger back in a week, and then take another drug (or stop taking the first drug) to go back to normal.

That's not how it works. For your finger to be capable of regeneration, the relevant genes would have to be in all your cells beforehand.

Advanced genetic engineering can be used to ensure that particular genes get activated only in the presence of some molecule that isn't naturally present in humans, so it would happen only if you take that particular drug; but it would still be applicable only to "newly built" humans e.g. as part of in vitro fertilization, not as something that can be applied to adults.

Re: Our closest worm kin regrow body parts, raising hopes of regeneration in humans

#164

Post by marvy »

abledon wrote: post #161
marvy wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would love to know why Sorry for late response. The entire blurb on Amazon gives off a mildly pseudo-science vibe, but it is mild enough that I was willing to forgive it. But this I could not overlook: "[...] how the hearts of two people in love (or in scientific terms `quantum entanglement') truly beat as one" Just no. I don't know quantum mechanics, but I know enough to say that can't possibly be anywhere near…

Ah yes, so, similar to how womens' periods synchronize up when they live together...Studies of couples show that when in a state of rapport, of emotional empathy, heart rates become matched and that they become mismatched when out of rapport: http://www.futurity.org/heart-beats-sync-up-in-romantic-coup... Yeah I would probably not take that quote 'Truly beat as one' literally, I mean, I'm betting the heart rates in t…

It's not the "beat as one" I object to, it's the "quantum entanglement".

Re: Our closest worm kin regrow body parts, raising hopes of regeneration in humans

#165

Post by abledon »

marvy wrote: post #164
abledon wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, so, similar to how womens' periods synchronize up when they live together...Studies of couples show that when in a state of rapport, of emotional empathy, heart rates become matched and that they become mismatched when out of rapport: http://www.futurity.org/heart-beats-sync-up-in-romantic-coup... Yeah I would probably not take that quote 'Truly beat as one' literally, I mean, I'm betting the heart rates in t…

It's not the "beat as one" I object to, it's the "quantum entanglement".

Oh, Rats! Well when speaking about quantum entanglement, we (as Naive realists on HN (see my profile)) should just ignore it for the next 2000 years, hopefully by then physicists will have a definitive yes or no answer for that domain. Like an unfortunate cardamon seed in our tasty sweet rice kheer, I guess just navigate around it and enjoy everything else presented in the book with a back-up-with-references-from-pub-meds-from-the-last-40-years format.

Re: Our closest worm kin regrow body parts, raising hopes of regeneration in humans

#166

Post by marvy »

abledon wrote: post #165
marvy wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the "beat as one" I object to, it's the "quantum entanglement".

Oh, Rats! Well when speaking about quantum entanglement, we (as Naive realists on HN (see my profile)) should just ignore it for the next 2000 years, hopefully by then physicists will have a definitive yes or no answer for that domain. Like an unfortunate cardamon seed in our tasty sweet rice kheer, I guess just navigate around it and enjoy everything else presented in the book with a back-up-with-references-from-pub…

All right, all right :) I'm adding it to my list.

Re: Our closest worm kin regrow body parts, raising hopes of regeneration in humans

#167

Post by Grishnakh »

PeterisP wrote: post #163
Grishnakh wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it could be turned on and off as needed: lose a finger in an accident, and take a drug to turn regeneration on. Grow your finger back in a week, and then take another drug (or stop taking the first drug) to go back to normal.

That's not how it works. For your finger to be capable of regeneration, the relevant genes would have to be in all your cells beforehand. Advanced genetic engineering can be used to ensure that particular genes get activated only in the presence of some molecule that isn't naturally present in humans, so it would happen only if you take that particular drug; but it would still be applicable only to "newly built" huma…

Why couldn't CRISPR or some more-advanced technique not yet discovered be used to insert the relevant genes into your cells? (Obviously, IANAG (geneticist))
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