Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

How axolotls regenerate their spinal cords and limbs

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

Isn’t this intelligent design?:

While scientists have known what happened after the first 4 days when an axolotl lost a tail and began to regrow its spinal cord, they haven’t known what happens in that first few days. To better understand this they created a computer model of what they thought was happening and then validated that by developing a tool to track individual stem cells in actual animals regrowing their spinal cords (see above). What they found was that a mystery messenger molecule (that they have yet to identify), synchronizes all of the neural stem cells into the same state of cell division. This is quite different as normally these cells divide randomly. These synchronized neural stem cells then divide rapidly in concert as the spinal cord regrows. The researchers have high hopes that using a similar molecule in a human spinal cord could help develop better treatments for spinal cord repair.

The upshot? We are closing in discovering all of the tricks of the trade that axolotls use to regrow limbs and other body parts. Once we know all of them, there could come a day that a drug is developed that we could sprinkle on an amputated limb or spinal cord and that regrows a new one!

Chris Centeno, “How Axolotls Repair a Spinal Cord” at Regenexx (June 23, 2021)

We need to learn how to do this stuff.

Comments
I'll bet it's a wave, not a molecule.polistra
July 1, 2021
July
07
Jul
1
01
2021
09:09 AM
9
09
09
AM
PDT

Leave a Reply