Saturday, September 10, 2005
Mutant Mice
The mouse trap arms race just escalated: (article, h/t Dean)
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When we injected fetal liver cells taken from those animals into ordinary mice, they too gained the power of regeneration. We found this persisted even six months after the injection....We were so intrigued by this story that we assigned a stringer to travel to Wistar Institute to find out more about these miraculous lab mice. The stringer returned with an "amazing" photo of one of these regenerative mice as well as some other "uncanny" mutant mice that we've placed in the extended entry.The self-healing mice, from a strain known as MRL, were then subjected to a series of surgical procedures. In one case the mice had their toes amputated -- but the digits grew back, complete with joints.
In another test some of the tail was cut off, and this also regenerated. Then the researchers used a cryoprobe to freeze parts of the animals' hearts, and watched them grow back again. A similar phenomenon was observed when the optic nerve was severed and the liver partially destroyed.
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