Whose flesh is as my own
takes other blood by choice
and out of love is grown
new flesh, new blood, new voice:
Newborn, this is true,
whatever it may be worth:
love your parents won
is yours by right of birth.
Monthly Archives: September 2005
welcome to the world
Live long and prosper, Amelia Jane S.
Another letter none of President Katrina’s toadies will read to him
Barbara Boxer is calling on President Katrina to bring the Mississippi/Louisiana National Guard home from Iraq right now. Imagine what a difference 7000 troops could have made in preparing for the hurricane and coping with the aftermath. Imagine watching that happen to your family, friends and home from halfway around the world and not being allowed to do a damn thing. Imagine that the degenerate in the oval office is accountable to the people, and send him a letter in support of Boxer’s demand. Here’s mine:
Dear President Katrina:
as you have seen from the window of your private jet, and later during several tough-guy photo ops with emergency forces who should have been out rescuing people, Hurricane Katrina has taken thousands of lives and caused billions of dollars of property damage. Among the many screwups you and your equally incompetent cronies have inflicted on the region, the absence of thousands of National Guard forces (currently stationed in Iraq) has served only to exacerbate the severity of the situation.
More than 7,000 members of the National Guard from Mississippi and Louisiana are in Iraq right now because you lied this country into an illegal war of aggression. They should have been home to help when the storm hit, and they should be home to help now. The thousands of lives that they would undoubtedly have saved, and could be saving right now, are on your conscience — or would be, if you had one.
You have a responsibility (you’ll need to look that word up) to allow members of the National Guard from these states to return to their homes, where they can assist in rebuilding efforts.
For once in your greedy, bumbling, silver-spoon life, do the right thing. Bring the Mississippi and Lousiana National Guard troops home from Iraq today.
regenerative mice, or, how about a little science for a change?
This is exceedingly cool:
SCIENTISTS have created “miracle mice” that can regenerate amputated limbs or damaged vital organs, making them able to recover from injuries that would kill or permanently disable normal animals.
The experimental animals are unique among mammals in their ability to regrow their heart, toes, joints and tail.
And when [fetal liver] cells from the test mouse are injected into ordinary mice, they too acquire the ability to regenerate […]
As usual, though, there’s a lot of important caveats missing from the “miracle mouse!” version of the story (and whenever you hear “miracle”, especially in science, think of David Hume). The article to read is The scarless heart and the MRL mouse by Ellen Heber-Katz (who runs the lab responsible for most of these discoveries) et al.. It’s a review article from about a year ago, so it doesn’t cover the stem cell work, but it gives a good background. It’s open source (but pdf, since the html version seems not to be working) and written for a fairly general audience.
The mouse strain in question is an inbred strain called MRL, and has been around since 1979. It was originally selected for large size and has a lymphocyte proliferative disorder which gives rise to a variety of immune problems, including autoimmune symptoms. For instance, the MRL mouse is a common model for systemic lupus erythematosus. The regenerative abilities of this mouse were discovered by researchers marking mice by punching small holes in their ears; within 30 days, the MRL mice healed the ear holes closed whereas other mice retain the holes for their lifetimes (mice live about two years).
Further investigation revealed that the MRL mice can regenerate almost all tissues except brain. This regenerative healing is fundamentally different from normal mammalian wound healing, and takes place without scar formation (which is of particular interest to cardiologists, since scars formed in response to heart injuries, including infarcts, are probably the primary cause of subsequent chronic heart disease and failure). Such healing is known in mammals, but only very early in development — interestingly, prior to the development of certain immune, especially inflammatory, responses. Heber-Katz et al. report that T-cells from nonhealer mice do inhibit the ear wound closure response. It doesn’t seem, however, that their immune dysfunction is the only mediator of the regenerative response in MRL mice. For instance, matrix metalloproteases 2 and 9 and their specific inhibitors have been shown to be differentially activated in healer vs. non-healer mice (MMPs and MMP inhibitors are primary players in tissue remodelling, including wound healing). In fact, at least 20 genetic loci (chromosome regions) have been shown to be involved in the MRL regenerative phenotype. Importantly, many of these show no overlap with the loci mapped to the autoimmune disorder. (In very plain English: it is not likely that the primary cause of the regenerative capacity is also the cause of the immune disorder, although there may be some overlap; this means that we may be able to replicate the regenerative ability without causing immune dysfunction.)
It is also not clear exactly which cells are doing the healing. In bone marrow transplant/transfer experiments, healing in both heart and ear tissue followed the recipient not the donor phenotype, meaning that bone marrow derived stem cells are not likely to be driving the healing response (although some involvement of donor cells was observed). Moreover, in these model systems recipient hematopoiesis is destroyed by X-ray exposure, so the cells responsible for the healing must be resistant to such treatment. It’s also possible to reconstitute irradiated hematopoiesis using fetal liver cells, which contain a population of hematopoietic stem cells. Heber-Katz’ group has tried that too (another open source article). The results were somewhat surprising: in the heart, healing followed the donor phenotype (i.e. the fetal liver cells transferred the regenerative capacity or lack thereof), whereas in ear injuries healing followed the recipient phenotype (as seen with bone marrow transplant/transfer). Once again, donor cells are seen in the healed heart but the mechanism of their involvment is not clear, nor is it clear why cardiac but not ear tissue could regenerate in this model.
Here’s the thing that jumped out at me: because non-healer liver cells transferred that phenotype, it appears that scarring inhibits regeneration in mammals. In the MRL animals, something is holding back the formation of scar tissue, and (therefore??) regeneration is taking place. In non-healer mice which received healer fetal liver cells, high degrees of chimerism (~60-80%) were seen, whereas non-healer into healer transfers showed an average of only 12% chimerism. Why was 12% non-healer enough to cause normal healing and scarring in that transfer, but 20-40% non-healer was not enough to stop MRL-type healing without scarring in the reciprocal model? The authors offer one clue: “We do not know which cell population is responsible for [scarring with only 12% chimerism] and it may be different than the population that allows for a regenerative response in the reciprocal chimeras.”
This much at least is already clear: the MRL mouse model will provide profound insights into mechanisms of wound healing (including the possibility of regenerative medicine) and the functions of hematopoietic stem cells.
katrina
Unless you’ve been living under a particularly isolated rock, you know what happened when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. If you have been reading any of the blogs on my list over on the right, you are probably about as well informed as anyone. If you want more information, I recommend the coverage at Making Light for basic what’s-going-on (and more), and two posts from Rivka for a good starter on the sociopolitical background: why the aid wasn’t there and depraved indifference.
A friend recently commented that he’d already given to the Red Cross, and if somone wanted more of his money they should come up with something specific not just another link to the Red Cross. Unless you’re a soulless empty-hearted meat puppet you too, dear reader, have already given to the Red Cross, so here are some specific, local, hands-on options:
Firstly, nearly all Katrina victims heading into Texas will pass through Orange, which is Rafe Colburn’s home town. In comments to that entry, Rafe’s mum, who is working with local relief efforts, provides some addresses to which you can send some money. These are churches and I’m an atheist, but ideological differences shouldn’t matter when there are people hungry and cold:
Orange Christian Services
2518 W. Park Ave Orange, Texas 77632
(409) 886-0938
Salvation Army, Orange Chapter
1950 Martin Luther King Dr.
Orange, Texas
(409) 883-4232
Orange Red Cross
908 Pine Ave
Orange, Texas 77632
(409) 883-2322
(Karen Colburn says:) My church is committed to serve these people for however long it takes.
Our address is:
First Presbyterian Congregation of the Church in Orange
Rev. Sam Knight, Pastor
902 Green Ave.
Orange, Texas 77632
(409) 883-2097
Secondly, my pal Brad is organizing an underpants drive:
Who doesn’t love underpants? I love underpants. You know who would really love underpants? People who don’t have any underpants.
Here’s the deal: Thousands of folks affected by Hurricane Katrina are being evacuated to shelters in Arkansas, Missouri and Illinois for who knows how long. Generous people have donated clothing and other supplies for them, but there’s a serious shortage of clean undergarments for women, men and children.
Click here to donate cash via PayPal and DropCash. I’ll be purchasing and drop-shipping as many clean, packaged undergarments as possible. They’ll go directly to folks who fled the hurricane-affected areas and are currently being cared for at relief centers in St. Louis; Belleville, Illinois; and Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. […]
I’m also taking care of the PayPal fees, so your entire gift will go directly to underpants. Cross my…er, heart.
If you don’t have a paypal account, you can email me (sennomaATfastmailDOTfm) and we’ll work something out.
Update: Me = dum. You can put money into Brad’s undies with any charge card (you don’t need to have your own paypal account in order to add money to someone else’s). If you don’t even have a charge card, then send me a carrier pigeon and we’ll work something out.