Scientists Uncover Genetic "Recipe" for Reptillian Limb Regeneration

[Colt47]

If we can unlock regeneration for specific limbs without causing the same regeneration to cause growth in the brain and other tissues that would be great. Unfortunately I got this feeling that the way the gene works it would probably do more harm than good to us humans. Otherwise we'd probably have the ability given it would have increased our long term survival.

Thats, not how evolution works. No mammal to my knowledge has this ability because to regrow a limb would require an incredible amount of energy. Energy that we cant spare due to 2 big reasons. One, mammals are just much bigger than most reptiles (the ones who can regrow limbs anyway) and two, mammals use a huge amount of energy just regulating our body temperature. Reptiles dont have that second problem, they regulate their heat through external methods, meaning they dont have to eat nearly as much to regulate their internal conditions, so their energy from food can go towards things like limb regeneration.

Its not that it would be harmful to us, its more that with the way we are built, we couldnt sustain it without a huge source of energy that we could never naturally get. However in this modern day and age where in 1st world countries, food is plentiful and medicine is more potent than it has ever been, its entirely possible that limb regeneration could become a common thing sometime down the road (Its gonna be a while before there is human testing)

No I think I got a pretty good understanding of how evolution works, the part that isn't working is people interpreting what is being stated. The first sentence happens to deal with trying to figure out how to get the genetic code working in a human if we were to use genetic engineering. The second sentence deals with evolution in the grand scheme of things over millions of years. I don't see any conflict with what I stated in the second sentence and your statement, as it WOULD require a ton of energy (and for that matter, both water and food) to facilitate the regeneration of an entire limb.

The point is that genetic code is a bit of a chaotic mess due to how evolution works to begin with. Nature doesn't really care too much about how organized it's coding skills are: if it can get a million monkeys smashing on keyboards and it results in a survivable organism, it's satisfied. Just look at some of the weird animals living in the ocean twilight and abyssal zones. We ended up with this fellow the gulper eel:

http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/content.php?sid=3541

 

[Fdzzaigl]

I could see this happen within a fair few decades.

"The_Blue_Rider" you are simply wrong, most mammals have evolved a different way of healing than reptiles or other groups like dinosaurs. Basically mammals developed a way to form a clot to stop the bleeding and close the wound quickly at the cost of more complete healing and regeneration that reptiles but also larger animals like dinosaurs had. It isn't a matter of us not having enough energy.

From an evolutionary perspective, the mammal's healing process is probably more effective. Because evolution doesn't give a frak whether you get to age 70 with all your fingers and legs intact, the only important thing is whether you reproduce or not.

But from our current, post-industrial view on things, it would of course be nice to have a much more complete healing factor for wounds and even limb regeneration, considering we already have other advanced means to treat wounds.

 

[blackrave]

Genetics are nice and all, but I would rather regenerate my limbs with microrobotics
For some reason I feel safer about that approach.

 

[Strazdas]

The only downside to this i can see is that we may eventually go to "regrow the weak flesh limbs once lost" router rathern tha "Lets make artificial organs like Deus Ex" route. I want the latter, away with this weak flesh prison!

 

[HannesPascal]

So I tried to read the original article and Kusumi has done a lot of work in examining lizard genome. I think it would be more effective to genetically engineer bacteria (taking the correct genes) to produce the necessary protein than it would be to engineer a human. The latter requires you to do the engineering before conception so already living humans would have no use of it.