Missing Exception Handlers in Stem Cells? Saturday, Jun 16 2007 

Stem cells as we know are those cells in the body that can grow into any other cells as and when required. Unfortunately adult humans have a very limited set of these cells in specific locations like liver and bone marrow.

In animals like salamander for instance stem cells grow back an entire limb that has been cut off!

The question here is how do stem cells know how much of a limb has been cut off? For instance in salamanders when 1/4 of a limb is cut off, exactly the missing 1/4 grows back into place. If 3/4 of a limb is cut off, exactly the missing 3/4 part grows back into place!! So where is the information stored about what portion has to be grown back?

Well, the obvious region should be the place of amputation where the limb has been cut off. There should be some indicator here which informs the stem cells WHAT EXISTED AT THE CUT OFF REGION.

Researchers have discovered an indicator for this. It is a protein called CD59. The concentration of this protein varies in different parts of the body. For instance in a limb this protein has highest concentration at the place where the limb is attached to the main body and slowly decreases as you move down away from the main body and is the lowest at the ends of a limb where there are fingers.

So CD59 are like address specifiers in the body whose concentration tells the surrounding cells as to in which part of the body those cells are located exactly! An excellent design/evolution!!

So far so fine. But what about some exceptions? What if CD59 concentration changes in some part accidentally? What happens if there is an amputation in that place??

For instance what if at the fingers of a salamander CD59 was increased to the level that is found at the place where its limb is attached to its body, and then we cut off the fingers?? Well, it was observed that usually such variations result in the growth of deformed body parts!!!

In other words natural growth of stem cells into body parts demands that there be no manipulations artificial or otherwise in the level of CD59 concentration. There are no exceptions that are handled here! As a software rule says ‘Garbage In -> Garbage Out’

Once we master the use of stem cells, people without major or minor organ or body part loss need not worry anymore. Stem cells can be used to grow back any part of the body that has been lost or damaged. People with diabetes for instance can remove their non functional pancreas and replace it with a new functional pancreas and start enjoying sweet dishes. Those who have lost their legs/hands in accidents can grow them back!! Smokers who have their lungs damaged can get a new pair of lungs (of course for them brain and blood stream continue to be an issue!)

So provided there are no nuclear wars that annihilate human civilization on earth in the near future, we will be moving towards an interesting era of medical excellence. Still, a long way to move towards becoming a Type I civilization ;-)

Factories of Human Body Parts Saturday, Mar 10 2007 

Some date in the not so far future:

A guy is filling out an application form at ‘Humanware Bio Labs’ which reads as follows

Application Form – Human Body Parts

Name : V K Shastry

Age: 19

Stem ID: ASFE135254

Replacement Part: Left Hand

Reason: Lost in an accident

*************

Replaceable human body parts.. Does it sound like a science fiction? Not any more.. Today’s fiction are tomorrow’s facts…

Enter the stem cell technology.. For beginners, here it is.. Stem cells are those cells in our body which have the ability to grow into any part of our body..  Remember, we all started our life as a single cell… which later got multiplied into millions where some went on to become our hands, some into legs, some into heart and so on….

So what if we still have some of those cells which were there in us before our body grew into distinct parts that we have today? Well those are stem cells which are also present in the umblical cord when we were born. of course we even have some of them today in our bone marrows!! But the stem cells in the umblical cords during the time of our birth are more effective and efficient into growing into any of our body part..

So the idea is that as soon as a child is born, store its stem cells from the umblical cord in a stem cell bank, permanently.. God forbidden, sometime in the later if something tragic incident happens and say there is a kidney failure of the child (now probably a grown up adult), well no problems, just take out a stem cell from the reserve that had been stored earlier and invoke the genes that will grow into a full size kidney!! What’s more? Well, the body will never reject this new kidney as it was created from one of its very own stem cell!! No more organ rejections.. No more donor searches… No more risks in organ transplants…

If a person loses a leg in an accident, no problem get a brand new leg attached…

As long as we continue to use our science and technology to create nuclear reactors for power, no problem, we make steady progress ahead..

The problem starts when we think of using the spent nuclear fuel to create an nuclear bomb….. Let us learn the fact that nuclear explosions are meant to take place only on stars to fuel us… Too near is too bad..

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