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How bioelectricity could regrow limbs and organs
- josefdlange 3y agoSo, Mary Shelley (and her character, Viktor Frankenstein) was right?
- nikofoto86 3y agoWow super fascinating
- Gnarl 3y agoRead "The Body Electric", 1998, by Robert O' Becker MD. Also, read "Cross Currents" by same author.
- MagicMoonlight 3y agoYou know, at first I thought this was a load of wank but thinking about it, it does make sense that electricity is used for signalling everything. How does the brain wire itself up? How do cells figure out what to attach to? There must be some sort of mechanism for them to locally communicate. So if you could give them the signal to reproduce and then signal them to form a structure, it's plausible they would be able to rebuild something.
- farkanoid 3y agoThere's a fascinating (in my opinion) TED talk about this featuring the same Biologist, with examples of regenerative experiments performed using Flatworms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XheAMrS8Q1c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XheAMrS8Q1c
- fpiacenza 3y agoThis is Michael Levin, same guy from the article.
- cortesoft 3y ago> featuring the same Biologist
- darzu 3y agoA more in-depth and broader version of that talk by Michael is here: https://youtu.be/jLiHLDrOTW8?si=unfPK_k1TUHmRI7m https://youtu.be/jLiHLDrOTW8?si=unfPK_k1TUHmRI7m
- bobmaxup 3y agohttps://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-023-01780-3 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-023-01780-3
- daoboy 3y agoI have seen several podcasts with Michael Levin now and it is really brilliant work he and his team are doing. For what it's worth he also comes across as a really nice guy.
- agumonkey 3y agohe's - very patient - much older than it appear (his research is already on trial in the lab maybe :) - has found the way to make days longer than 24h, he's on 1330 podcasts a week
- sedivy94 3y agoI (and many others, I’m sure) had the pleasure of listening to him on the Lex Friedman podcast. I’ve listened to that episode three times, I really enjoy it. Not only did he discuss his research, but he also dips into the philosophical domain - connecting electromagnetic communication between cells to philosophy of the mind and the self. I don’t know what that itch is, be he scratched it.
- hosh 3y agoDidn't Robert O Becker also explored this space?
- carapace 3y agoYeah, AFAIK Becker's "The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life" is pretty much all there was until Michael Levin came along and picked up the torch. IMO it's one of those weird "holes": why so little interest in human tissue regeneration?
- krackers 3y ago> why so little interest in human tissue regeneration? There's this HN comment I've always found interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32744294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32744294
- carapace 3y agoThat is interesting, cheers!
- Fezzik 3y agoBecause there’s no immediate and clear plan for a return on the investment due to how speculative things are, private funding is scant. Because we (the USA) are spending most of our money on the insane military complex there is little extra public funding for actually beneficial R&D. Edit: grammar.
- zmgsabst 3y agoThe US budget is 6.5T USD for 2022. The US DOD budget was 753B USD for the same year. The US Medicare program was 747B USD; with another 45B USD for NIH. So the US actually spends about equal amounts on military and healthcare, at the federal level — about 11.5% on each. A better question might be why the US gets so little ROI on its healthcare spending.
- progne 3y agoThis technology doesn't seem to be limited to existing limbs and organs. After replacing a missing arm you could add a third arm. A man could grow a uterus since he has the X chromosomes and with a transplant that includes Y chromosomes, a woman could grow testes. Parthenogenesis could become a choice. Another head seems possible. The limits are more likely to come from regulation than a reluctance of people to transform themselves.
- baja_blast 3y agoThis technology can also be used to turn cancerous cells into healthy cell Michael Levin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g798Mck7dPk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g798Mck7dPk
- goda90 3y agoI imagine for an extra arm you'd need to also figure out how to grow the right neurons to control it.
- progne 3y agoPlus extensive musculature at the new shoulder joint and reinforced bones for the new muscle attachments. I won't be first in line.
- nerdbert 3y agoI get the sense that if it's connected, your brain will figure out how to make it work.
- fpiacenza 3y agoThe curious thing about Michael Levin's work is that they figured out "top level abstractions" in bioelectricity that tell the body to figure out everything, including the proper wiring. The have grown eyes in the wrong places that figure out how to connect to the brain, and even two heads. These guys are decoding the actual bioelectrical code that governs morphogenesis, in a way that you don't need to micromanage anything, you just say "grow an eye" and the cells figure out the rest.
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- generalizations 3y agoIs this related to any new research? I’ve been interested in this stuff for a while, but this just looks like a rehashing of previous work.
- agumonkey 3y agoThis year levin's lab has been on heavy presence online.. don't know much more.
- LegitShady 3y agoHave you seen Michael Levin's talks about this subject before? It's his team's original research.
- plipt 3y ago--My question as well. Am I missing a published date on this podcast? It’s my first time seeing their content. This isn’t their latest episode and I am wondering how recent it is.-- Edit: it’s from April 27, 2023. I did miss it. Says it on the linked page
- agumonkey 3y agoIn a similar topic, peter reddien's lab also made some very interesting videos about regeneration: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=peter+reddien+lab&iax=videos&ia=videos https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=peter+reddien+lab&iax=video... For people interesting into structural/mathematical underpinnings of living tissue, his videos demonstrated some strange iterated/algorithmic patterns. For instance, re-grafting an eye slightly shifted, will mess with the regeneration system, and will lead to a ladder of smaller and smaller eyes appearing. As if being out of balance geometrically caused a rippling effect (like a terminal resizing)
- moomoo11 3y agoCool so we just gonna make Space Marines now? Nice
- farmeroy 3y agoI absolutely loved hearing him talk about his work on Sean Carrol's Mindscape Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm7VDk8kxOw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm7VDk8kxOw I think the last time I had paid attention to cellular biology was high school and this really blew me away.
- nprateem 3y agoSo now the scientific community accepts chi. About time. The reality of bioenergy is obvious to anyone who's practiced chi kung or experienced their chakras.
- krapp 3y agoNo. What's being discussed here has nothing to do with the pseudoscience of chi or chakras.
- angra_mainyu 3y agoAre you the kind that would've scoffed and made the same condescending remarks when scientists proposed to study what buddhist monks were doing? I for one am happy people actually took the time to investigate their practices, including fascinating things like "tummo". See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tummo#Scientific_investigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tummo#Scientific_investigation This extremely close-minded, arrogant, and disdainful attitude is utterly unscientific.
- akomtu 3y agoWe're seeing how the west is discovering those "chakras" and unlike the east, where the understanding of this topic is very broad and fuzzy, due to lack of experience in most cases, the west will develop a very narrow, but very sharp knowledge. Pair that with the thick dark cloud of nihilism enveloping the west today, and it's not hard to see where this will end up. Levin seems to have discovered what the east calls "etheric double" - a sort of living blueprint that guides the construction of any organic lifeform. That blueprint is of magnetic nature, and although it's not quite the same thing that flows in our copper wires, it easily interacts with the type of magnets at our disposal. From this point the discovery of inflow and outflow sinks of that "bioelectricity" is near.
- rajamaka 3y agoCan you explain what you mean by "a very narrow, but very sharp knowledge"
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- DoreenMichele 3y ago...how bioelectricity provides the blueprint for how our bodies are built—and how it could be the future of regenerative medicine. DNA is the blueprint for how the body builds itself. I wish them well in exploring this and figuring out how to more effectively foster advanced healing of serious damage, but the body already has this info. /2 cents from a person who no longer has a hole in her lung
- lumb63 3y agoAnyone interested in this should read The Body Electric. Becker was loosely aware of this phenomenon many years ago.
- pimpampum 3y agoYeah Michael Levine is the efing king, has many interesting theories and experiments, highly recommend if you are into biology and bio-cybernetics.
- black_13 3y ago[dead]
- seydor 3y agoIf you are a flatworm. Whether this is even conceivable in mammals i m mot sure
- kunalgupta 3y agohell yeah demonslayer irl
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y agoPaul Rand is the complete opposite of Rand Paul in both name and deed.