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In a landmark study sure to provoke interest, researchers from the University of Edinburgh have regenerated an aged organ — in vivo, inside a living animal — to its youthful state though noninvasive manipulation of genes. It’s a breakthrough that not only brings hope for a wide variety of age-related ailments, but which fundamentally challenges our idea of what aging is.
ok, so obviously this is at its beginning stages, and I have hope in this science maturing to where my initial statements is a simple choice verses a dream...this seems very promising though.
Go read the article and tell me what you think.
That’s a long way out, however. In the extreme long term, patchwork replacement of organs and body parts is even prophesied to allow immortality, and this study shows that we might be able to supplement grown organs with regenerated ones. There’s no telling how many tissues might be usefully regenerated with such a simple molecular switch
Such interesting and potentially awesome species redefining times we live in...lets see where it leads us.
(queue the cynics )
Prior research had already identified a protein called FOXN1 as likely linked to thymus degeneration; its expression levels in the thymus seem linked to that organ’s fate. The mice in this study were bred with a specific genetic sensitivity, however, so that when exposed to the drug tamoxifen they would begin producing fully youthful levels of FOXN1, regardless of their actual age.
How long until gene therapy is mandated in the water supply, and paid for out of taxes, as a nanny state welfare component?
WRONG!
This was NOT "gene therapy" - it was "epigenetic therapy."
The lack of identified genetic determinants that fully explain the heritability of complex traits, and the inability to pinpoint causative genetic effects in some complex diseases, suggest possible epigenetic explanations for this missing information. This growing interest, along with the desire to understand the “deprogramming” of differentiated cells into pluripotent/totipotent states, has led to “epigenetic” becoming shorthand for many regulatory systems involving DNA methylation, histone modification, nucleosome location, or noncoding RNA. This is to be encouraged, but the labeling of nongenetic systems as epigenetic by default has the potential to confuse.
Science, October 2010
An epigenetic system should be heritable, self-perpetuating, and reversible. Same article
...Greetings, O Apostle of Epigenetics.
Care to explain what is heritable in the above layout?
WHAT IS EPIGENETICS?
As an organism grows and develops, carefully orchestrated chemical reactions activate and deactivate parts of the genome at strategic times and in specific locations. Epigenetics is the study of these chemical reactions and the factors that influence them.
You posted your response to DietJoke but I assume you are addressing me.