Menu

Skip to content
  • Home|
  • About|
  • Participate|
  • Social Directory|

The Well:

MBL News from the Source

You are here: Home / Humans Have Genes To Heal Severe Spinal Injuries | International Business Times

Humans Have Genes To Heal Severe Spinal Injuries | International Business Times

Published on January 16, 2018
Humans Have Genes To Heal Severe Spinal Injuries | International Business Times
Share on Facebook
Facebook
Pin on Pinterest
Pinterest
Tweet about this on Twitter
Twitter
Share on LinkedIn
Linkedin
By Himanshu Goenka

About 550 million years ago, when animals were still in the early stages of evolution, there lived a creature who was the common ancestor of both humans and a fish species called lamprey. Lamprey is an eel-like jawless fish which has the capacity to heal its own spinal cord injuries, so is it possible humans can do the same?

A lamprey with a severed spinal cord is, like one would expect, paralyzed. But give it about 10 to 12 weeks, and no medication or treatment of any kind, and it will have resumed its full swimming behavior. Many of the genes that repair the damaged spinal cord in lamprey are also present, and active, in the repair of the peripheral nervous systems of mammals, including humans, a new study has found.

“Scientists have known for many years that the lamprey achieves spontaneous recovery from spinal cord injury, but we have not known the molecular recipe that accompanies and supports this remarkable capacity. In this study, we have determined all the genes that change during the course of recovery in the lamprey. Now that we have that information, we can use it to test if specific pathways are actually essential to the process,” Ona E. Bloom of Northwell Health’s Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, one of the authors of the study, said in a statement Monday. Read more …

Source: Humans Have Genes To Heal Severe Spinal Injuries, Like This Fish Species | International Business Times

Posted in MBL in the News | Tagged via bookmarklet

Post navigation

← The Era of Big Seaweed is Upon Us | Medill Reports Chicago Seventeen Research and Innovation Milestones in 2017 | UChicago News →

MBL in the News

  • Mesmerizing Video Study Reveals How Octopus Arms Are So Flexible | ScienceAlert
  • A Newfound Source of Cellular Order in the Chemistry of Life| Quanta Magazine
  • Jellyfish Build Walls of Water to Swim Around the Ocean | The New York Times
  • The World’s Most Diverse Group of Bacteria Lives Inside Your Mouth | Popular Science
  • Camouflaged words: A Conversation with Roger Hanlon on Art and Science | st_age
  • Enthusiastic Crew Cares For The Mary Garden | Falmouth Enterprise
  • Octopus And Squid Evolution Is Stranger Than We Imagined | ScienceAlert
  • Falmouth’s Great Pond Area Next Up For Sewering | Falmouth Enterprise
  • Future Of Climate Change, Tongue Microbiome | Science Friday
  • A Closer Look at the Genomes of Mouth Microbial Communities | Harvard University
Archived Posts

Subscribe to the Well

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts.

Copyright © 2021 Marine Biological Laboratory