Re: News: Carbon dating shows humans make new heart cells.

Ye Old One wrote:
Carbon dating shows humans make new heart cells

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090402/full/news.2009.232.html

The cold war helps settle a hot debate about how hearts grow.

Monya Baker

Fallout from nuclear bomb tests during the cold war has just yielded
encouraging news for those searching for ways to reverse heart
disease.

A team led by Jonas Frisén from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm
has shown that adult human hearts make new muscle cells, albeit very,
very slowly1.

I fail to be surprised by this. After all, the liver can regenerate quite quickly--cut off half the liver and the other half can regenerate into a full liver in a relatively short time, probably from stem cells residing in the liver.

What surprises me is why this does not happen in other organs like the heart. Why did we humans evolve to have a regenerative liver, and (of course) regenerative skin--but not a regenerative heart? Evidently this is true in other mammalian species. Is it also true for non-mammalian species?


--
Steven L.
Email: sdlitvin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Remove the NOSPAM before replying to me.

.

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