Humans Share a Relevant Gene With This Fish That Can Repair Its Spinal Cord (ScienceAlert)

CLAUDIA GEIB, FUTURISM
16 JAN 2018

The lamprey looks about as different from a human as you can imagine. This fish has an eel-like, finless body, bulging eyes, and a circle of frankly horrifying teeth in place of a jaw, which some species use to latch onto other animals and suck their blood.

Yet these alien-looking creatures share something fairly extraordinary with humans: we both contain genes that, in the lamprey, allows it to repair broken spinal cords.

The discovery shows promise for medicine: if we could one day activate the same gene in humans, we could reverse spinal cord damage - even paralysis.

The genes were identified by a collaborative group of scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratories (MBL), the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra University, the University of Kentucky and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

In their study, injured lamprey went from full paralysis to normal swimming within 10 to 12 weeks.
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more: https://www.sciencealert.com/humans-have-the-same-gene-as-this-fish-that-can-repair-its-spinal-cord?perpetual=yes&limitstart=1