The Regeneration of Cells in the Body

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Our body has a base line capacity to continually place cells or to men mild injuries. How far can we stretch this ability? And i don't even know that much about the process of healing ounds, to be honest. O, goodi ain't sorry we got off tract. But let's go back to the regeneration here with the jelly fish. So you mention that there were a few factors that were important to the regeneration, the energy and the ameno acids. A, did you sort of go through a whole bunch of different things that they could try to do before you homed in on the ones that actually seemed to be relevant? Yes.

Biological organisms are pretty good at healing themselves, but their abilities fall short in crucial ways. Planaria can be cut into pieces, and each piece will regrow into an entire organism; but for most advanced animals, loss of a limb becomes a permanent condition. But why should that necessarily be so, if an organism’s genome knows what it’s supposed to look like? Lea Goentoro’s lab has recently produced surprising results that indicate that it’s easier than you might think to coax animals into regenerating limbs.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Lea Goentoro received her Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Princeton University. She is currently Professor of Biology at Caltech. Her research involves how biological systems function and develop across a variety of scales, including perception, organization, and self-repair.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.