Regenerating Tissues
- Date Submitted: 01/28/2010 06:29 AM
- Flesch-Kincaid Score: 41.3
- Words: 1519
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The ability to regenerate the tissues of the human central nervous system
(CNS) is one of the greatest projects undertaken by biomedical engineers
today. With this eventual technology, permanent paralysis and blindness
due to CNS injury will be a thing of the past. Central nervous system
injuries will be repairable, an idea that was, until recently, just a
fanciful dream, something out of a science fiction novel.
In the last few years, however, giant strides have been made to make the
idea of CNS regeneration a reality within the grasp of engineers and
doctors alike. This technology has advanced to the point where successful
tests are being performed on lower level adult mammals. If all continues
to go well, human implementation may soon follow.
The axons of the central nervous system in adult mammals do not regenerate
spontaneously after injury, mainly because of the presence of
oligodendrocytes that inhibit axonal growth. These glial cells block the
growth of the axons in the central nervous system, preventing any kind of
regeneration within the CNS.
What was discovered, through experimentation, was that lower non-mammalian
vertebrates could regenerate their central nervous system after injury.
Regeneration of the optic nerve occurs spontaneously in fish. This
phenomenon has been correlated to the presence of factors that are toxic
to oligodendrocytes. This substance is closely related to interleukin-2.
Lower level mammals, on the other hand, are, like humans, unable to
regenerate their CNS. The same experiment performed on the fish above
yielded completely different results when done on adult mammals. Severing
of the optic nerve near the eye is followed by a loss of retinal ganglion
cells combined with a failure of axons to regrow into the brain.
Further...
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