Biochemists on the road to assembling new tissues

[LARA]

http://www.physorg.com/news155485366.html

This is a cool article on how a research team is learning to tag cells with DNA to allow them to assemble into microtissues.  Getting cells to organize has been kind of a problem with designing replacement tissues for bio-med applications according to the article, and this technique helps them get around that.  It's not growing a new arm in a lab jar just yet, but it might have great applications for growing new marrow, skin and other simple tissue types.

It just shows how close we are getting to really healing some of the terrible things that can happen to people, but frustrating because it's all still in the research stages.   Who knows what kind of advances our grandkids will see.  Personally though, I'm going to get really excited when they can inject my skin with cuttlefish chromatophores and I can download a YouTube video and play it on my forehead.

[Will]

http://www.physorg.com/news155485366.html

This is a cool article on how a research team is learning to tag cells with DNA to allow them to assemble into microtissues.  Getting cells to organize has been kind of a problem with designing replacement tissues for bio-med applications according to the article, and this technique helps them get around that.  It's not growing a new arm in a lab jar just yet, but it might have great applications for growing new marrow, skin and other simple tissue types.

This is a very important step in the direction of regrowing things as complex as limbs. Personally, I need an aorta, but things certainly don't have the stop there. Imagine you're diagnosed with lymphoma and having new lymph nodes grown and inserted in the span of a few weeks. Imagine replacing an over sized heart with a brand new heart without any waiting list.

Imagine growing new gray matter.

It just shows how close we are getting to really healing some of the terrible things that can happen to people, but frustrating because it's all still in the research stages.   Who knows what kind of advances our grandkids will see.  Personally though, I'm going to get really excited when they can inject my skin with cuttlefish chromatophores and I can download a podcast and play it on my forehead.

Hahaha... just another wonderful gift from our undersea brothers, the cuttlefish. Me? I want a cuttlefish mustache: