Talk:Regeneration (biology)

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[edit] Regeneration with human babies

I read once that very young kids can regerenerate the distal phalange of finger hands when cut. Is it urban legend or true ?Hektor 19:29, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

In particular, see Finger#Anatomy of the finger and make any necessary changes if you have expertise in this area. - dcljr (talk) 23:28, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
It is not an urban legend; plus, it's not only babies. Even an adult's finger cut above the first knuckle can regenerate. --Brazucs 20:02, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

There is a lot of work going all over the world on regenerative Medicine. I am new to Wikipedia editing. I am rather nervous about editing the work. Can somebody familiar with the subject go through the links, I have provided below and thereby enrich the article? It should also include regeneration in Planaria.

http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0020232

i think the section about the human finger regenerating needs to be deleted or redone, its not exsactly a intellegent section, it doesnt make since , for instance "up to the age of 10..or so" or "de facto" doesnt have any scientifical reasoning in the article..and if some one wants to fix the article for de facto as well.. good luck, its messy peace Roy Stanley (talk) 19:56, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wnt

Yasuhiko Kawakami, Concepción Rodriguez Esteban, Marina Raya, Hiroko Kawakami, Mercè Martí, Ilir Dubova, and Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte, Wnt/beta-catenin signaling regulates vertebrate limb regeneration, Genes Dev. November 17, 2006 (link to abstract)

This reference has some information on the involvement of the wnt signaling pathway in regeneration of limbs in vertebrates. Fuelbottle 23:29, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fragmentation vs Regeneration

What is the difference between fragmentation and regeneration? They both seem about the same to me. Duinemerwen 04:17, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, fragmentation, especially in biology, is more about separation—sometimes asexual reproduction—where as regeneration is about healing injuries. A very loose analogy made from pop culture: Claire Bennet can heal herself after an attempted rape/homicide, but doesn't split apart or, to my knowledge, create a duplicate of herself from severed body parts. Zilla, however, has a habit of laying eggs asexually which hatch into virtual clones. A better example than the latter would be am ameba splitting in two. I'd recommend you take any other questions to a biology forum. Ace Class Shadow; My talk. 18:42, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Regeneration of human ribs

Can someone please add a reliable source, the current source is a creationist website (sic!). There must be scientific source about this, if it exists. -- 87.187.14.164 23:00, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

i did today, feel free to expand on it Roy Stanley (talk) 19:52, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
I have to protest this edit. I just now followed the links you provided, User:Royissick, and I do not think they are adequate. Did you accidently insert the wrong references by mistake? The first reference seems quite out of place. It concerns replantation of muscular tissue (the latissimus dorsi); and not only does not speak of regeneration, but explicitly discusses why and under what circumstances the muscle could be "sacrificed" (since the transplantation will destroy its original functionality). The only real connections I can find with the issue is the fact that retransplantations are concerned, and that the word "flap" is used (but not in connection with ribs).
The second reference at least cocerns employing ribs for surgery; and it mentions that this is fairly common. However, I found nothing therein stating that the ribs regenerate. There is a quotation from this reference, to wit, The grafted rib and cartilage survived, allowing the patient to resume functional ambulation for day-to-day activities, but this clearly referred to the transplanted material in its new site, not to a regeneration of tissue of the site from where it was removed.
Thus, I'll restore the {{Refimprovesect}} template. JoergenB (talk) 02:24, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but I do not think this is acceptable. It is not enough to quote a reliable source, if you absolutely misquote it. The [[{{Reimprovesect}} was removed again, and the nonsens quotations remain. I hoped the editor who inserted the quotations would fix it, but this has not happened.
I'm going to explain what the quoted texts say in plain English, in the article. You won't like it, because nonsense written in a mixture of Latin and English may seem to be scientific, but nonsense in plain English clearly isn't. An alternative is that we remove this section, until someone find better references, and adequately presents the content of the references.
In order to simplify the process, I quote the section here in the discussion page. I hope for a fruitful cooperation, with the aim of presenting the state-of-the-art of human regeneration as far and widely as it is known to-day.-JoergenB (talk)

[edit] Quoted text

Human ribs can regenerate if the periosteum, the membrane surrounding the rib, is left intact (Nadia Rosenthal in Howard Hughes Medical Institute "The 2006 Holiday Lectures on Science"). For this reason, ribs are one of the most reliable and versatile flaps used in reconstructive surgery, and free tissue transfer. [[1]]
In one cited case scientists attempted arthroplasty using a free latissimus dorsi myocutaneous flap and a costal osteochondral graft. The grafted rib and cartilage survived, allowing the patient to resume functional ambulation for day-to-day activities. Arthroplasty using costal osteochondral grafts seems to be an effective means of reconstructing the interphalangeal joints of toes. (J Am Podiatr Med Assoc 96(6): 508–512, 2006)[[2]]

In all respect, JoergenB (talk) 14:50, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] teeth

The shark article mentions "New teeth grow continuously in a groove just inside the mouth and move forward from inside the mouth on a "conveyor belt" formed by the skin in which they are anchored. In some sharks rows of teeth are replaced every 8–10 days".

I've heard rumors of people (dentists?) trying to figure out how to convince the human body to grow another set of teeth. I've also heard rumors (urban legends?) of humans who had 3 sets of teeth (rather than the standard 2 sets).

>I'm pretty sure that I've heard of elephants and other herbivores varying from their standard number of dental sets. The same thing occurring in humans wouldn't surprise me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.61.112.245 (talk) 23:00, 26 February 2008 (UTC)


--76.209.28.72 18:54, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] References

Currently there are a number of places in the article where a reference is being pointed to but they aren't linked to anything so it's not possible to determine exactly what the supporting reference is supposed to be. Something to be cleaned up.--66.51.190.70 22:24, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Definition lacking

Presently, this seems to be a very nice article about how renegation occurs and which animals may regenerate e.g. lost limbs (excepting the indirect reference to Genesis, of course). However, a school kid - or for that part, an adult - who doesn't know what renegation is about and hopes for a simple answer might be a bit confused. I think the article should start with a very short definition. I'll add a suggestion; but since biology is not my main field, I may not hit the bull's eye. Please check up whether this is a correct guess! JoergenB (talk) 16:25, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] biogerentology

the study of ageing, im thinking about posting a section here about the machanical regenerating of human cells science. and what not, if there isnt already a biogerentology or bioregeneration article. Roy Stanley (talk) 17:04, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Mythology

There might be room in this article for mention of regeneration as it occurs in mythology. For example, the viscera of Loki, eaten by the birds of prey or the regrowth of goats from their bones, both in Norse mythology. I think I recall something appearing in Celtic myth as well, surely someone better edified can fill in with a range of different myths? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.61.112.245 (talk) 22:55, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Should spontaneous and therapeutically artificially stimulated regeneration be separated?

Most of the factual parts of this article concerns recorded cases of spontaneous regeneration, in various animals; mainly it is presented organ by organ. Spread among this, there are a few facts about experimentally stimulated or suppressed regeneration (mice), and one example of therapeutically induced regeneration (human fingertip). On the one hand, these subjects clearly are related. E.g., study of details in the regeneration process for salamander limbs clearly is linked to trying to develop medical methods for regenerating human limbs; cf. the article Regrowing Human Limbs by Muneoka, Han, and Gardiner, pp. 36-43 in Scientific American, April 2008. On the other hand, IMHO there is a clear encyclopedial difference between spontaneous regeneration and therapeutical methods; when I read an article in an encyclopaedia, I may be interested both of what goes on in nature and what humanity may achieve, but I like to be able to discern which is which without trouble.

I wonder if one should add some words of the difference in the beginning of the article, mainly keep to "natural" regeneration, and move the (so far) few exceptions of experimentally or therapeutically induced regeneration to a separate section. What do you think?-JoergenB (talk) 18:59, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Side effects

The article is missing a discussion on the costs of regeneration, such as the amount of stress that it places on the rest of the body. Ham Pastrami (talk) 13:10, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Regeneration of fingertips, and other bad references

I removed the citation in the section on regeneration of fingertips as the cited page is a quasi-scientific creationist page that actually doesn't have anything to say about fingertips. It88 (talk) 18:43, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

The references in this article are in some disorder. I think this is due to some editors having misunderstood our reference mechanisms. They added fixed number referencess, like this: [14]; these could be correct when inserted, but later changes of the reference lists made them all go out of order.
In the instance It88 found, a search of the history reveals that the first finger tip notice was included here, by Bboyneko, who inserted a fixed number reference [14], and in the same edit manually added an object to the edit list, namely
  1. Weintraub, Arlene , The Geniuses Of Regeneration. 2004 MAY [3]
Incidently, this reference appears as the 14'th one at that historical version. I think we can take it for granted that this was the reference Bboyneko intended; but that later deletions or additions instead made a match with the creationist reference (which was accompanying the original attempt to evidence regeneration of human ribs).
I'll reinstate this particular original reference; but I suspect that there are more disorder of references in this article. Probably we should check all the references!
As to how "scientificcally verified" the finger tip notice is, notice that case was mentioned was mentioned in the Muneoka, Han, and Gardiner Scientific American article (vide supra); including a picture, showing a markedly shortened finger but a seemingly normal finger tip. JoergenB (talk) 19:27, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Regen in fiction

I noticed that the list at the end of the article does not contain the example of the Highlanders probably most well known from the films. I thought this was an excellent example of regeneration in fiction, does anyone object to the addition of this example? If someone else knows these films well enough to add a bit on them, go for it cos I haven't watched them in ages... --Marshmellis (talk) 12:04, 9 June 2008 (UTC)