This story is from Mar. 16, 2010
I wonder what's happened since then? You'd think we'd really jump on this kind of science. I wonder why all this stuff is so slow.
Scientists Demonstrate Mammalian Regeneration Through a Single Gene Deletion
21–26 of 26 posts
Re: Scientists Demonstrate Mammalian Regeneration Through a Single Gene Deletion
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Individual organisms don't work for "the system of evolution"'s benefit. They work for themselves.
But mammals do! They are social creatures. A social group that has more efficient food use due to turnover of injured members would be selected for.
Group-selection explanations are rarely correct.
Re: Scientists Demonstrate Mammalian Regeneration Through a Single Gene Deletion
#23Re: Scientists Demonstrate Mammalian Regeneration Through a Single Gene Deletion
#24Re: Scientists Demonstrate Mammalian Regeneration Through a Single Gene Deletion
#25I think an important question to research here is why p21 evolved in mammals. The article says knocking it out doesn't appear to increase cancer rates, which would have been my first and only guess.
I seem to remember reading a while ago that the immune system in animals with regenerative ability needs to be stronger because the blastoma wound is "open" longer and more prone to infection. For humans today we can mitigate infection pretty well relative to a pretty much any mammal in the wild.
Re: Scientists Demonstrate Mammalian Regeneration Through a Single Gene Deletion
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe somehow it speeds up the system of evolution by keeping life expectancies shorter, thereby increasing turnover (death and new births)? I have no clue just throwing that out there.
To survive natural selection the gene must give the animal some reproductive advantage. I can understand that promoting longevity beyond the reproductive stage of one's life cycle affords no such benefit. But one still has to account for the fact that the lack of the gene appears to increase the survivability in the reproductive pahse as well. Something more must be going on.
Not necessarily. The mutation could have survived for any number of reasons including genetic drift. As long as it didn't kill the organism right away there wouldn't be significant negative pressure to get rid of it.