Hey there, and welcome to Play Noggin.
I'm Julian, your brain's Player Two.
I grew up watching some pretty terrifying horror movies, and when I say "grew up,"
I mean I was probably too young to be watching Nightmare on Elm Street 2 at 8 years old,
MOM.
So I'm pretty well-versed in horror.
At the same time, I can totally understand why some people can't stomach it.
For a lot of people, myself included, watching horror movies or playing horror games provides
an exciting thrill.
For others, the tension is uncomfortable and some of the, shall we say, more grotesque
imagery sticks around in the old noggin longer and more vividly than they'd like.
Good news for those of us who do enjoy horror, though: We're not psychopaths!
Probably!
Some researchers believe people who enjoy a good dose of horror use it as a form of
catharsis--pushing out all those pent-up negative emotions.[1]
Anyway, all that to say, I dig horror games, and Resident Evil 7 is a fantastic horror
game.
It drops the previous entries' guns-blazing action for a These Hills Have Eyes/Deliverance
sort of vibe.
You're wandering around a plantation mansion owned by some residents who, spoiler alert,
are evil.
Try as you might though, you just can't seem to kill these guys.
Every time you shoot them, stab them, or whatever them, they simply regenerate, and they're
back to chasing you in no time.
So, what's up with that?
Obviously, it's a video game, so I'm happy to suspend disbelief and blast away at Crazy
Zombie Wife until I'm out of ammo, but how far away from reality is the medical technology
in this game?
I'll admit, I hadn't given a lot of thought to the potential reality of regenerative medicine
while I was playing the game because other things were a little more pressing.
I knew work was being done, but I hadn't checked in to see when I would be able to
regrow my appendix.
Miss you, little guy…
And I knew certain animals have the ability to regrow limbs -- take the Linckia laevigata
starfish for example.
But for us if a hand gets cut off and you don't save it to reattach it, who has one
thumb and is out of luck?
This guy. since our dumb bodies won't do it on their own, we've had to use our smart
brains to figure out how to make it happen.
There are several ways this science is being approached, from stimulating adult stem cells
in order to encourage organ growth, to artificially creating organs and tissues to be transplanted,
eliminating the need for donors.
That's good news for our hero Ethan Winters, because the Baker family doesn't seem too
willing to part with their own organs -- though they do serve up a mean liver and onions.
Or whatever.... whoever….that is.
One major component of regenerative medicine is called tissue engineering.
That's the process of combining scaffolds -- that is, the material upon which the tissue
is grown -- cells, and biologically active molecules and turning them all into active,
living tissue.
It's very Dr. frankenstein.
When growing tissues, scientists create scaffolds out of a variety of material -- it could be
protein, it could be plastic.
Cells are introduced to the scaffolds and hopefully, tissues will begin to grow.
Scientists have managed to grow artificial skin and cartilage successfully with this
technique, though we have only seen limited success in using it with actual patients.
Regenerative medicine combines tissue engineering with our bodies' own propensity to self-heal.
Our cells want to multiply, and our bodies want to heal themselves -- regenerative medicine
helps them do that in ways nature just wouldn't allow.
The idea of these scaffolds was borrowed from nature.
When cells reproduce, they typically create their own scaffold -- called an extra-cellular
matrix -- to grow on.
But the matrix doesn't just keep your cells from collapsing into a mushy pile, it also
functions as a post office, delivering messages in a timely manner from the environment around
it.
The information given to the cell via its extra-cellular matrix plays a big part in
determining what happens to the cell.
Scientists study how different cells respond to different signals, and are able to influence
cells to do things they wouldn't normally do, such as repair damaged tissue or even
grow completely new ones.
Some of the most exciting research on regenerative medicine is being done with stem cells.
Stem cells are a particularly special type of cell that are sort of like a blank slate.
They start out "undifferentiated," and are able to differentiate into a specialized
cell type, like muscle, bone, skin, etc.
You can get them from embryos that are 4 or 5 days old -- those are called, as you might
imagine, embryonic stem cells -- or you can get them from adults, but not all stem cells
are equal.
Stem cells that can take on any role are known as pluripotent, and their only limitation
is they can't grow you a completely new body.
You'll find those in embryos.
Those that are still pretty versatile, but can only take on a selection of roles, are
known as multipotent.
Those are what you're going to find in an adult body.
Because stem cells can take on so many different roles -- just like veteran actress Meryl Streep,
our national treasure -- researchers are using them in particular to help the body heal itself.
A few stem cells can be extracted from a human and then grown in a lab, and once enough new
cells have formed, they can be inserted into the patient again.
Some recent trials have successfully treated congestive heart disease and regrown muscles
in soldiers injured in explosions.
But otherwise, right now, tissue engineering isn't playing a big role in treating various
conditions.
We've been able to create small arteries, skin grafts, cartilage, a trachea, and even
a small supplemental bladder, but because the tech is so new, the cost is very high.
And while we can create tissue for more complex organs, like the heart or lungs, we're not
at the point of being able to stitch them into you after you get hacked up by an insane
plantation owner.
But the tissues that are grown in a lab aren't just going to waste like the nice meal the
bakers cooked you that you refused to ear -- they're actually being used in medical
research, reducing the number of helpless animals we need to experiment on.
Now, if Google's Sergey Brin could just perfect his artificially grown hamburger and
get it down to McDonald's prices, maybe we could just leave the poor cows alone already.
And the people, too.
Jeez, Baker family, just… go to Trader Joe's.
Thanks for watching.
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