First Human Liver Grown in Lab | Hacker News Reader

First Human Liver Grown in Lab

webmd.com

51 pointscwan11 comments

"The adult organ has 100 billion liver cells," Baptista says. "The number we seeded is 100 million. We are quite far away from required number. But our aim is to reconstitute only 30% of the full-size adult liver, because that is the bare minimum needed to sustain a person.

So it's not a full human liver but still really cool either way. Although its deceiving when articles compare large numbers like that...would have better to say we only seeded 0.1% of a full liver, we need 30%.

On the other hand, once you are growing things, the difference between 100 million and 100 billion is not all that great. Approximately 10 cell divisions is all it takes...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liver#Regeneration

I wonder how this will affect living habits. When you have enough of spare parts do you still care about the original ones?

good question. there are reports of recipients taking on personality traits from their organ donors after the transplant. in this case, there would be cause to be attached to one's own original organ as the one from the donor might "change" you (somehow).

if the new organ was "seeded" from your own dna / cells though, then there should be no need to get attached to the original organ as the new organ will be 100% yours too. (well in theory)

I'm sorry, but do you have some kind of source for the claim about recipients taking on personality traits from the donor? I know it's been the plot of a few movies, but I don't think I've ever heard someone suggest it was based in reality.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but it doesn't seem very plausible.

tons of stories and links.. google around. http://hubpages.com/hub/Cellular-Memories-in-Organ-Transplan...

I did search before commenting. The most charitable discussions called the idea pseudoscience and not based on facts.

Also highly ranked on google were discussions like this:

http://skepdic.com/cellular.html

I don't know enough about skepdic to judge whether or not they're a valid source of information; but so far _nothing_ has appeared to have any real facts about this. Frankly, it strikes me as a fairly ridiculous notion, but if there are some actual facts out there to be considered then it would be great to see them. Hubpages is a glorified blogging site from what I can tell.

As far as I'm aware, the only organ that can store memories is the brain; and I couldn't find anything that was willing to argue against that fact with any form of scientific rigor.

I don't know if it is scientifically proven or not. Here is one small study. I think it is possible for sure but who knows if it can be proven scientifically beyond the shadow of a doubt. The fact that it is a possibility is good enough for me.

I would rather have a farmed organ made and grown from my own cells (assuming it is possible and proven method of course) than a donor organ that might have some chance of either rejection or even the remote possibility of adding or changing my personality / persona.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/k51335l4k4676577/ "We conducted open-ended interviews with volunteer transplant recipients, recipient families or friends, and donor families or friends, in hospitals in various parts of the country. Patients included ten recipients who had received heart or heart–lung transplants. Main outcome measures were transcripts of audiotaped interviews quoted verbatim. Two to 5 parallels per case were observed between changes following surgery and the histories of the donors. Parallels included changes in food, music, art, sexual, recreational, and career preferences, as well as specific instances of perceptions of names and sensory experiences related to the donors. The incidence of recipient awareness of personal changes in cardiac transplant patients is unknown. The effects of the immunosuppressant drugs, stress of the surgery, and statistical coincidence are insufficient to explain the findings. We suggest that cellular memory, possibly systemic memory, is a plausible explanation for these parallels."

If I had nearly died and then been saved by the modern miracle of a heart or lung transplant, I figure I might change a few things about my personality as well thanks to my new lease on life. I don't think a wacky "cell memory" theory is required to explain these observations.

Occam's razor most certainly applies.

This is certainly interesting. Surely, some conclusions could be drawn from transplant recipients even today. Being a matter which could cause significant controversy in the medical community, I wouldn't expect to see any non-anecdotal data on this, but it would certainly be welcome.

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