Regrowth of Lost Limbs Possible; Geneticist Michael Levin Successfully Grows another head to a Flatworm

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Lost arm or a leg in an accident or war is irreplaceable but soon it will be possible to regrow these lost limbs with the help of modern genetic engineering. Instead, being one of two million amputees in the USA, a person will be able to get back his body and figure as it was before the accident.

Geneticist Michael Levin is currently a popular science feature who makes the best use of the way electricity flows through body cells. He has created a six-legged frog and a two-headed flatworm. Recently, the experiments are limited to simple cold-blooded creatures but the success will lead him soon to start working on the human body, too, reports Particle News.

Theoretical limb regeneration process depends more on the body's own electric current than surgery or medicine. The bioengineer Michael Levin exploits the electric current already present in the body which flows among the cells to find a way for the regrowth of lost limbs.

How a lost limb can possibly grow?

A lost limb's site is prepared by cleaning the wound from any debris and the raw nerves, tendons, bones, muscles and other tissues are exposed s as to treat the molecules in all these with a light electric charge.

For the successful electrical current flow, the site of the wound is kept moist at its natural state and protected from air. Then, the open wound is covered with a sleeve-like cover. This cover which is made of silicon, silk and rubber mimics the natural habitat of a womb writes Popular Science.

The cells' bioelectric signals influence the action and direction of genes, acting as a sort of software code for the entire body. Once the signal to divide cells is given, a cascading effect happens, and the body will begin the natural process of growing an arm.

The sleeve is added with drugs that can operate like ion channels of the body. A hollow protein that settles on the surface of the cells, enables charged molecules to move freely in and out. This process changes the whole charging and signaling system of the cells across the body.

The bioelectrical signals of the cells influence the direction and action of genes like a software code for the whole body. Once the cells are signaled to divide naturally, a forceful effect happens in the body and a lost limb starts growing again naturally.

The limb grows like a fetus; that is to say, a foot of a 25-yer-old soldier lost in a roadside bomb would take a decade to grow the size of a middle-school boy but fully functioning.