Magic embryology: growing mouse kidney in rats (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, February 05, 2019, 18:03 (2119 days ago) @ David Turell

Using mouse stem cells and some lab tricks:

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-02-closer-made-to-order-human-kidneys.html

"But researchers have been working on ways to grow healthy organs outside the human body. One such method, called blastocyst complementation, has already produced promising results. Researchers take blastocysts, the clusters of cells formed several days after egg fertilization, from mutant animals missing specific organs and inject them with stem cells from a normal donor, not necessarily of the same species. The stem cells then differentiate to form the entire missing organ in the resulting animal. The new organ retains the characteristics of the original stem cell donor, and can thus potentially be used in transplantation therapy.

***

"After implantation into pseudo-pregnant rats, the complemented blastocysts matured into normal fetuses. Remarkably, more than two thirds of the resulting rat neonates contained a pair of kidneys derived from the mouse stem cells. Further screening showed that all of the kidneys were structurally intact, and at least half could potentially produce urine.

"'Our findings confirm that interspecific blastocyst complementation is a viable method for kidney generation," says study corresponding author Masumi Hirabayashi. "In the future, this approach could be used to generate human stem cell-derived organs in livestock, potentially extending the lifespan and improving the quality of life of millions of people worldwide."

"In summary, he chronic global shortage of donor kidneys leaves many end-stage renal disease patients reliant on continued dialysis treatment. To address the donor kidney shortage, a team led by researchers at the National Institute for Physiological Sciences in Japan attempted to grow mouse kidneys inside rats using transplanted stem cells. The resulting kidneys appeared to be functional, providing proof-of-concept validation that this approach could be used to generate human kidneys inside livestock. "

Comment: The stem cells (blastocyst cells) must follow exact directions in their genomes to make perfectly functioning kidneys. This is the expectation of the authors of this study. True automaticity of cells following instructions to make perfectly functional kidneys. These cells cannot decide to anything different, but if there is an abnormal stress they must ignore it or, if they adapt in some way, they may produce an anomaly that is not functional.

All the processes of life must follow instructions or result in an aberration that is not viable. This is the theory behind my position on automaticity.