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August 30, 2005

The secret of NIMH is now available at the Wistar Institute

In the continuing vein of sceintists-playing-god stories (zombie dogs and monkey brains, we now take you to... Immortal mice?

SCIENTISTS have created "miracle mice" that can regenerate amputated limbs or damaged vital organs, making them able to recover from injuries that would kill or permanently disable normal animals.

Well, that's rather cool. Bypassing the better mousetrap, they're breeding better mice, because that's what we need. Expecially in New York. Mice its harder to get rid of...

at the Wistar Institute, a US biomedical research centre

Wait. I thought it was the National Institute of Mental Health that did this stuff. Where's Nicodemus and Brisby?

"We have experimented with amputating or damaging several different organs, such as the heart, toes, tail and ears, and just watched them regrow," she said. A similar phenomenon was observed when the optic nerve was severed and the liver partially destroyed.

"It is quite remarkable. The only organ that did not grow back was the brain."

"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."

So the only way to kill them is to sever their heads and/or destroy their brains. Which is bringing both zombies to mind, and the following scrolling narration... "He cannot die, unless you take his head, and with it his power. In the end there can be only one."

Good god. Just utterly incredible. If it ever makes it to clinical human testing and works this well, the implications are astounding. Arthritis, organ failure, nerve damage, spinal injuries, amputations all gone in one fell swoop.

Incredible.

The researchers believe the same genes could confer greater longevity and are measuring their animals' survival rate. However, the mice are only 18 months old, and the normal lifespan is two years so it is too early to reach firm conclusions.

It really only leaves two things: The quest for world domination and working out how to create such small admantium claws for my army of Wolverine mice.

Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at August 30, 2005 01:43 PM

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