Frogs Regrow Missing Limbs in Lab Study | Hacker News Reader

Frogs Regrow Missing Limbs in Lab Study

wsj.com

46 pointslxm18 comments

More about Michael Levin:

What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg

Why don’t (today’s) Robots get Cancer? – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L43-XE1uwWc

The electrical blueprints that orchestrate life – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XheAMrS8Q1c

And a tweet about the article – https://twitter.com/drmichaellevin/status/148641322650194330...

I'd also like to draw attention to his previous appearance on Curt Jaimungal's podcast[0], in which he gives an extremely detailed account of his research. Really fascinating stuff, I wonder what will come out of it.

[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0TNfysTazc

It's behind a paywall, while the original article is freely accessible: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abj2164

Perhaps there is a future where we get a general DNA mod early in our lifecycle that primes us for easier regeneration later in life.

Assuming that at some point in the next 100 years we are able to develop an artificial womb, so women won't have to damage their bodies by giving birth, not only will birth become easier for everyone but it will also be easier to do such modifications with the fertilized egg.

This is artificial womb idea is evolutionary suicide.

Human reproduction would eventually cease to function without artificial wombs as selective pressure for natural reproductive fitness disappears, causing genetic drift to go unrestrained.

Should humanity ever go through a technological bottleneck (solar flare?) where artificial wombs are no longer available, then the population would decline rapidly as only those who can still reproduce naturally will be able to have offspring. The subsequent bottleneck in human capital will ensure that it will take ages for humanity to reach the same level of technological ability, if we ever will.

There were times in the past where the human population was reduced to only tens of thousands people [0].

In 10,000 BC population was estimated to be in a range roughly between 1 and 10 million individuals. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimates_of_historical_world_...

Natural selection also means death.

We already go to extraordinary measures to allow people who could not otherwise produce or bear children to do so. A very large number of women who would otherwise die in childbirth, possibly with the death of the child, now survive. "Natural selection" would kill them.

To hell with natural selection.

"Human reproduction would eventually cease to function without artificial wombs as selective pressure for natural reproductive fitness disappears"

I don't mean to be rude. I'm guessing English is not your first language?

This sentence is entirely clear within the context of genetic evolution.

You are assuming that they meant to write “with” when they accidentally wrote “without”? Artificial wombs don’t currently exist, so the sentence has no meaning as written. But even if we re-write the sentence so it obeys the normal rules of English grammar, it is still deeply silly — the whole point of artificial wombs is that we would then be free of many of the problems that now plague human reproduction, such as infertility.

> Assuming that at some point in the next 100 years we are able to develop an artificial womb

It may be sooner than that, at least for lambs:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC7408362/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34823842/

https://archive.fo/6I8hU

Isn't it that what is described is an acceleration of natural regrowth?

It seems that the regeneration process induced by the researchers is different than the natural regrowth pathway in Xenopus.

> At best, adult frogs normally grow back only a featureless, thin, cartilaginous spike, (…) Our procedure induced a regenerative response they normally never have, which resulted in bigger, more structured appendages. The bioreactor device triggered very complex downstream outcomes that bioengineers cannot yet micromanage directly.

(via https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181106171813.h...)

Opening scene in a horror flic: "The bioreactor device triggered very complex downstream outcomes that bioengineers cannot yet micromanage directly."

https://www.reddit.com/r/onesentencehorror/

I volunteer to taste test the original limb versus the regrown one.

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