Interesting stuff.
Quote:
In a first-of-its-kind demonstration, the UCSF team produced customized adhesion molecules which bound select cells in a predictable manner, giving them de-facto control of the regenerative potential of the body.
“We were able to engineer cells in a manner that allows us to control which cells they interact with, and also to control the nature of that interaction,“ said senior author Wendell Lim, PhD, director of UCSF’s Cell Design Institute. “This opens the door to building novel structures like tissues and organs.”
Adhesive molecules can be found all throughout the human body creating communicative-bonds and immune pathways between tens of trillions of cells, but manipulating them has been beyond the reach of scientists so far.
Cellular bonding creates the characteristics of the structure they create. Tighter bonds form complex, solid organs like the liver or lungs, while looser bonds permit structures like immune molecules to do their disease fighting work with flexibility.
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"There are a thousand things that can happen when you go light a rocket engine, and only one of them is good."
Tom Mueller of SpaceX, in Air and Space, Jan. 2011
02 Jan 2023, 8:42 pm
