Scientists are discovering the secrets behind whole-body DNA regeneration

[The AchieVer]

Scientists are discovering the secrets behind whole-body DNA regeneration

A team at Harvard has released a study on panther worms which revealed a regenerative master switch called early growth response, or EGR.

 

Philippe Huguen / AFP/Getty Images

Scientists want to know why some fauna, like some species of the humble jellyfish, can regenerate their whole bodies following an injury. In a paper published last Friday, a team at Harvard have made some breakthroughs. 

 

With three-banded panther worms as their test subjects, Harvard's Assistant Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Mansi Srivastava and her team discovered a master control gene that's activated by noncoding DNA, according to the Harvard Gazette.  

 

The control gene is called EGR for early growth response. Once activated, it turns on genes that correlate to regeneration, according to Andrew Gehrke, a postdoctoral fellow in Srivastava's team.

"What we found is that this one master gene comes on [and activates] genes that are turning on during regeneration," Gehrke explained to the publication. "Basically, what's going on is the noncoding regions are telling the coding regions to turn on or off, so a good way to think of it is as though they are switches."  

 

 

Once the process is activated, the panther worms' genome physically open up to facilitate regeneration. Establishing how the genome manipulates itself for regeneration is "one of the big findings in this paper," Gehrke said. 

 

Unfortunately, the discovery won't lead to humans being able to regenerate their limbs Deadpool style. Although humans also have EGR, the team said, our wiring is much different to creatures like the panther worm.

 

 

 

 

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[Jogs]

Regeneration is possible for humans also, but its switched off in the software level. A whole human body starts from a single cell. This cell contains all the information to become a whole body, it also performs all the activities to transform into a whole body.

But after a certain point of time all the growth stops. Why? Because we are programmed like that. But whole of the growth doesn't stop. Our hair and nails never stop growing, even if a person is severely ill or in coma then also hair and nails don't stop growing.

The answer to regeneration is to tell the body itself to regrow, its a difficult task but can be done. Its like hacking your own body. 🙂

[dufus]

spending trillions on it

[mp68terr]

19 hours ago, Jogs said:

Regeneration is possible for humans also, but its switched off in the software level. A whole human body starts from a single cell. This cell contains all the information to become a whole body, it also performs all the activities to transform into a whole body.

But after a certain point of time all the growth stops. Why? Because we are programmed like that. But whole of the growth doesn't stop. Our hair and nails never stop growing, even if a person is severely ill or in coma then also hair and nails don't stop growing.

The answer to regeneration is to tell the body itself to regrow, its a difficult task but can be done. Its like hacking your own body. 🙂

Still have to see what a software is in the cell.  It's all hardware, if such term can even be used. Life existed well before we started to put computer words into it.

The info is in the nucleus, the DNA being the source of what the cell can do, or not. Changing/replacing the nucleus in a cell changes its fate.

The emergence of the role of the non-coding DNA is an important aspect of the research, it's clearly not junk 😉

[Jogs]

Ancient people also knew about the software that resides inside us, they called it the Soul.

[The AchieVer]

Just now, Jogs said:

 they called it the Soul.

 So true.