A team of scientists in Finland have replaced a 65-year-old patient’s upper jaw with a bone transplant made from stem cells taken out of his fatty tissue and grown in his abdomen. After identifying mesenchymal stem cells, which mature into bone, muscle and blood vessels, they cultivated them for two weeks in a nutritious soup that included the patient’s blood serum. Afterwards they attached the cells to a calcium phosphate scaffold and put it inside the patient’s abdomen to grow for nine months, not unlike a bone baby. The block was then transplanted into the patient’s head, using screws for bone and microsurgery for connecting arteries and veins to vessels in the neck. This procedure for treating severe tissue damage brings custom made spare body parts closer to reality.

Finnish patient gets new jaw from own stem cells, Reuters.com

The University of Washington has a fascinating ongoing project, Tissue Culture & Art (TC&A), which blurs the line between the living and artificial by creating semi-living entities, perplexing vegetarians worldwide. First, they made Victimless Leather. Cultured in incubators from animal cell lines, nourished with antibiotics, the tissue was attached to a polymer matrix in the shape of a coat. The result is a leather coat that did not require the death of an animal, and as an aesthetic bonus, has no stiches, having been grown in one piece. Second, TC&A made Disembodied Cuisine, growing skeletal muscle over biopolymer as a potential food source. Though it does require an initial biopsy, while the semi-living meat is growing in a lab, the animal can heal. So, semi-living tissue may one day lead to meat for vegetarians and a significant decrease of animal suffering. Other TC&A projects include Pig Wings, which grew wing-shaped semi-living objects out of pig tissue, and Semi-Living Worry Dolls, traditionally used in Guatemala to ward off worries, these seven miniatures represented the TC&A’s worries: biotechnology, capitalism, demagogy, eugenics, fear itself, invisible genes, and the fear of hope.

The Tissue Culture & Art Project

It has been recently discovered that Komodo dragons can reproduce asexually. This happens through the process called parthenogenesis (Gr. virgin-creation), when an unfertilized egg develops to maturity by itself, and has been recorded in 70 species of vertebrates, mostly snakes and monitor lizards. In some species, like certain whiptail lizards, this has made the male superfluous, their asexual reproduction produces only female offspring. For most species with it, parthenogenesis is usually the only mode of reproduction, but the Komodo dragon can do both. London’s Chester Zoo’s dragon Flora recently had seven children by the process, which retroactively demystified the four mothered by Sungaï last year (some speculated that she stored sperm inside her, carrying it for over two years since she had last seen a male). Parthenogenesis, by the way, was how the dinosaurs multiplied in Jurassic Park.

Curiously, the male may actually be unnecessary for mammal reproduction as well. In 2004, researchers lead by Tomohiro Kono at the Tokyo University of Agriculture created a living mouse by combining cells from two female mice. This is not parthenogenesis, since two parents are involved and the process does not yet have a name. But the mouse, Kaguya, named after a princess from Japanese folklore who was found as a baby inside a bamboo stalk, has since conventionally conceived and given birth to a nest of pinkies (baby mice). So the question in the shadows: are males gradually becoming obsolete, have they been peeing in the gene pool, soon to get kicked out? After all, life started out as and in most cases remains asexual (e.g. there are 10 times more viruses on the planet than organisms), the male arose as a sort of anomaly, an exception. Perhaps, the male could one day sink back into the sea of primordeal liquid life, the Lacanian lamella in which by perpetually reproducing itself, one lives forever. But then, considering that evolution tends towards diversity, maybe instead we will see a third sex, with a wonderous new anatomy. Anyway the wind blows, we can always try and make nature bend to technology, right Kaguya?

Female dragon has virgin births, LiveScience.com
Four new dragons for St. George, ZSL.org
Fatherless mice muddy the water, Wired.com
Kaguya, Wiki

You’ve heard about the imperceptible dark matter making up much of the universe, you know about the mysterious grey matter of the human brain, why should DNA be any different? Chemists at Ohio State have proven their previously hypothesized "dark" energy states that occur in nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA and RNA. These weird high-energy states are dark because they cannot be detected with the usual UV flourescence techniques. To observe these dark states, the chemists used a technique called transient absorption, which works off the idea that molecules absorb light at specific wavelengths. First predicted by calculations last year, where they were called n(p)*, dark energy states have now been proven to exist in cytosine, thymine and uracil, three of the five bases of the genetic code.

UV light can make DNA mutate, which sometimes leads to diseases like cancer. So, the faster DNA can dissipate UV energy, the less likely it is to take damage. "Bright" energy states last only about a picosecond (a millionth of a millionth of a second), thus posing little risk of mutation, but dark states can last 10-150 picoseconds, in which the molecule unstable and vulnerable. "Now we see that there is a family of energy states in DNA responsible for energy dissipation, and this is a major correction in how we view DNA photostability," Bern Kohler, head of the research team. "The detection of this dark state in single bases in solution increases the chances that it may be found in the DNA double helix."

DNA’s dark side, AstroBio.net
New study sheds light on ‘dark states’ in DNA, PhysOrg.com

Researchers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, have engineered blood-compatible nanoscale materials using an anticoagulant called heparin, a therapeutic used to maintain blood flow and prevent clotting during medical procedures. Robert Linhardt and co. have shown that a composite heparin membrane with nanopores can work as a dialyzer, an artificial kidney, filtering the flood and maintaining blood flow. Furthermore, now that nanotech is hemo-compatible, it opens the door for nerve and tissue repair, as well as nanomed cancer treatments. Just imagine, a swarm of nanobots swimming around your bloodstream, fighting bad cholestarol, cleaning up carcinogens, unclogging capillaries, improving circulation, and easing stress on the heart. Stick them in my vein.

Blood-compatible nanoscale materials possible using heparin, EurekAlert.org

Motto: Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest
(Let no man belong to another who can belong to himself)

Paracelsus (1493-1541), born Theophrast von Hohenheim in Einsiedeln, Switzerland, is sometimes called the father of toxicology. A pioneer in the use of chemicals and minerals in medicine, he was the one who named the element zinc (from "zinke" German for pointy). An alchemist (initiated by Henry Cornelius Agrippa), he worked off the hermetic view of health centered around the harmony between the microcosm, Man and the macrocosm, Nature. Despite the risk, he investigated the plague firsthand. He also came up with a chemical diagnosis of madness and was the one who invented the Alphabet of the Magi used for engraving angelic names on talismans. Though a pacifist, he always had a huge broadsword at his side, even when he slept. His search for occult knowledge took him through Germany, France, Hungary, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, China, to Constantinople, where an Arabian adept supposedly imparted Paracelsus with the supreme secret of a the alkahest, a hypothetical universal dissolvent. Another story has it that the devil gave him a white horse, but considering the historical Paracelsus died in a White Horse Inn makes the similarity questionable. A new book by Phillip Ball, Devil’s Doctor, explores the life of this mysterious figure. Today, Paracelsus still crops up in Harry Potter books.

Ragged-trousered alchemist, Guardian.uk.com
Devil’s Doctor: Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science, Phillip Ball

Researchers at Hebrew University found that certain properties of the cannabis plant can strengthen human bones, ergo preventing osteoporosis. The article appeared this week in the PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A.) journal. The research team, headed by Prof. Itai Bab, and partially funded by the US NIH (National Institutes of Health), found that plants like marijuana contain substances that activate CB2-receptors, endocannabinoids ("inner weed"), fatty acids produced mainly in the brain but also found in bones and the immune system. Many CB2-receptors were found in mice bones and shown to be key in preserving normal bone density. However, pot also activates the CB1-receptors, mostly present in the nervous system, and it is this reaction that gives cannabis its psychoactive aspect. For this reason, the researchers have already developed a synthetic compound called HU-308, which battles osteoporosis without the high. Still, looks like another point for team Medical Marijuana.

HU Scientists Develop Prototype Drug to Prevent Osteoporosis Based on Cannabinoids Produced by Body, HUNews
Pot-like substances help fight osteoporosis, ScienceBlog.com

Tuesday, January 17, in a 6-3 vote, the US Supreme Court validated Oregon’s unique 1997 physician-assisted suicide statute, the Death with Dignity law, used to end the lives of 200+ terminally ill patients. The ruling backed a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which said that former-Attorney General John Ashcroft’s "unilateral attempt to regulate general medical practices historically entrusted to state lawmakers interferes with the democratic debate about physician-assisted suicide." Consequently, the Bush administration improperly tried to use federal drug law to prosecute Oregon doctors who prescribe overdoses. "The authority desired by the government is inconsistent with the design of the statute in other fundamental respects. The attorney general does not have the sole delegated authority under the (law)," Kennedy wrote for himself, retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer.

The Court’s Ruling, SupremeCourtUS.gov
DeathWithDignity.org

Jon-Kar Zubieta’s team at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, US, has confirmed that placebos relieve pain by boosting the release of endorphins. Fourteen healthy males in their twenties volunteered to try what they were told was "a medication that may or may not relieve pain". To induce pain, the researchers gave the young men infusions into the jaw that made them ache. All the volunteers, who were given a placebo of salt solution, reported feeling less pain. But the researchers did not simply take their word for it: instead, they scanned the volunteers’ brains using positron emission tomography (PET). They had injected the volunteers with a radioactive tracer that binds to the same mu-opioid receptors as endorphins do, which allowed them to figure out the level of endorphins produced in each volunteer’s brain. The scans revealed that after the volunteers took the placebo, their brains released more pain-relieving endorphins than normal. Zubieta thinks the placebo effect is piggybacking on the body’s innate painkilling system. "[The system] is there to ensure the survival of the organism," he says. "The placebo effect is acting through these mechanisms." But exactly how it does this remains a mystery.

Placebos trigger and opioid hit in the brain, NewScientist.com