Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
To a certain extent. Whilst the liver has incredible regenerative potential, that is, it can rapidly replace cells lost to disease, toxins (including alcohol) and senescence, these cells need a connective tissue "scaffold" (known as the ECM - extracellular matrix) to cling to in order to preserve the normal architecture of the liver.
They have found some genes including one called GATA-4 which seems to be turned on to do this process and is also used when the heart is developing in an embryo in the first place and this suggests, if we can work out how to do this, it might be possible to trick human heart cells to do the same thing, and therefore, turn into stem cell-like cells in the heart that's been injured and therefore ...
The liver is an incredible example of an organ that can regenerate when it’s injured; in fact, it’s so good that live liver donations are possible where a person gives away up to 80% of their liver to a new recipient and then regrows themselves a new one! Martin Boughen has personally experienced how well the liver can regenerate.
In terms of your small intestine, that’s not quite the case. You can lose substantial amounts of small intestine but you do start to have nutritional consequences for that. People with super short parts of gut can start to have liver disease as a result of that. So losing small amounts of small bowel is quite serious.
In some animals though, that can happen and things like gold fish, lampreys, and also even salamanders can restore whole limbs, and bits of their nervous systems. If you take the eye out of a frog, turn it around and put it back in again, it will rewire itself back into the brain, only, because the eyes now are upside down, the animals see ...
If it was a patch of skin they can branch out and re-supply the skin so you do get sensation back. But nerves grow quite slowly, probably a couple of millimetres a day. So if you've got a big injury the length of your arm it can take a few weeks before the nerves can get back to your arm.
Kat - It's true that the liver does grow back. It does this amazing regenerative potential. You can pretty much cut away half of someone's liver and it will grow back again. It does sound like a fantastic idea for transplant patients but sadly you will still have the problem of tissue rejection. You have to very, very carefully match it.
If it was a patch of skin they can branch out and re-supply the skin so you do get sensation back. Nerves grow quite slowly, probably a couple of millimetres a day. So if you've got a big injury the length of your arm it can take a few weeks before the nerves can get back to your arm.
But it could also regenerate. But in between regeneration, you might be dead. It would not be a good outcome. So what you really want is maybe sort of an ersatz liver. Kat - Temporary liver. Angelika - A temporary liver for the short time that your liver has time to regenerate. Kat - I'd like one for Friday night when I go out drinking. Borrow one!
study, published in the advance online edition of Genes and Development on Nov. 17, demonstrates that vertebrate regeneration is under the control of the powerful Wnt signaling system: Activating it overcomes the mysterious barrier to regeneration in animals like chicks that can't normally replace missing limbs while inactivating it in animals known to be able to regenerate their limbs (frogs ...