X-Message-Number: 13062 From: Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 09:11:48 +1000 Subject: Grow you own body parts This looks intresting... Progress in Growing Organs Frog Eyes, Ears from Embryo; Human Parts Next? By Eric Prideaux The Associated Press T O R O N T O, Jan. 4 ? Japanese researchers have grown frog eyes and ears in a lab using the animal?s own embryo cells, technology a scientist said could eventually help doctors replace lost or damaged human sensory organs using cells from the patients? bodies. Makoto Asashima, a biologist at prestigious Tokyo University, said Monday that the process is an alternative to donor transplants. The team cultivated thousands of embryo cells in a retinoic acid solution for five days to produce the organs, he said. Depends on Acid Amount Varying the concentration of the retinoic acid somehow brings forth different genetic instructions in the cells, Asashima said. A lower concentration activates a set of genes producing eyes, while a higher concentration activates genes producing ears. The researchers used embryonic stem cells, the ancestral cells that develop into the tissues and organs in the body. The procedure is different from cloning, in which a single cell from an organism grows into a copy of the original, he said. Asashima said his team is the first to produce the eyes or ears of an animal in a test tube. Kidney Already Transplanted In a similar, simpler procedure, the researcher said he previously grew frog kidneys and transplanted them into other frogs. The recipient animals lived for more than a month, he said. The team did not test the survival rate of frogs with transplanted natural kidneys, he said. Hideyuki Okano, a professor of neural development at Osaka University?s Graduate School of Medicine, said Asashima?s work was ?extremely striking.? Okano, who has been following the research, said it could eventually help scientists reduce reliance on donors for rare organs. Scientists are already able to grow human skin from patients? own cells, and such transplants are carried out in the United States, Europe and Japan, Asashima said. Asashima said he plans to submit his findings, which were first reported in Monday?s Mainichi newspaper, to one of two Japanese scientific journals, Zoological Science or Developmental Growth and Differentiation. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=13062