Scientists Transplant Functional Eyes On the Tails of Tadpoles 85
New submitter physlord writes in with a story about tadpoles with eyes on their tails. "Using embryos from the African clawed frog (Xenopus), scientists at Tufts' Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology were able to transplant eye primordia—basically, the little nubs of flesh that will eventually grow into an eye—from one tadpole's head to another's posterior, flank, or tail....Amazingly, a statistically significant portion of the transplanted one-eyes could not only detect LED changes, but they showed learning behavior when confronted with electric shock."
Unless you want a Nobel (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Unless you want a Nobel (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems to me that cases like these are quite different.
Look up Waldemar Haffkine (Score:4, Informative)
Testing on yourself is a time-honored tradition in both science and medicine.
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Yeah, because we'd totally just try unproven experiments on ourselves without testing to see if it works and is safe. We may be that stupid, but the scientists aren't.
Testing on prisoners and students is a time-honored tradition in both science and medicine.
It's a rare scientist who intentionally tests on himself.
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Where the hell is the human medical technology?
Sit tight, we've dispatched a emergency team of psychiatrists armed with a boot-load of Valium.
Re: Great time to be a blind tadpole (Score:5, Funny)
Where the hell is the human medical technology?
I don't know about you, but I'd just assume pass on grafting eyeballs onto my bum TYVM.
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Where the hell is the human medical technology?
I don't know about you, but I'd just assume pass on grafting eyeballs onto my bum TYVM.
Hopefully, they grafted eyelids, too, otherwise, the view while taking a dump would be enought to jab a pencil in that third eye.
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I take it then that Google Ass [youtube.com] isn't gonna be much of a success?
np: Bauchklang - Expo (Live In Mumbai)
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It is called basic science. Basic science leads to applied science and applied science leads to technology. But if you don't put in the money for the basic science, the fields to explore for applied science will dry up.
Understanding how the eyes communicate with the brain of a growing organism is extremely important. If the general principles behind tadpole sight are understood, they might be able to scale up to human applications. But you don't know if you don't study it.
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Well Yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well Yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
If you (gasp!) read TFA, they used controls with no eyes, and with regular eyes. Those with the implanted eye (the two regular eyes were removed) did significantly better at avoiding the shock than the no-eye control. Though they didn't say how much better, which makes me suspect the difference was very small (albeit statistically significant).
The more interesting thing to me was that tadpoles without eyes could still sense when an LED was turned on.
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look man, fuck the results.
they got to first surgically remove the eyes, then to graft them on some creatures bum and then they got to electrocute them! who needs results when you have a job like that??
Why? (Score:1)
Well that sounds useful.
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If it leads to enough understanding that we successfully regenerate damaged nerves in the human body then it could be one of the most useful pieces of science ever done. Imagine eventually being able to cure things like blindness, paralysis and disorders of the nervous system like Parkinson's!
Sounds pretty darned useful to me.
A rear view (Score:1)
could be very useful.
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Coming soon: human trials!
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"... when confronted with electric shock. [...]"
Coming soon: human trials!
I am pretty sure that those websites have been around for many years already....
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Human tails could be a much more interesting typo. :)
Scientists did WHAT!?! (Score:5, Funny)
To summarize:
Scientists removed the eyes from a tadpole and attached those eyes to another tadpole's ass, then shocked it to see if it could learn to see with it's ass. Hilarity ensued.
Gives rise to a new expresssion... (Score:5, Funny)
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Or:
Boss: "You've got your head up your ass!"
Tadpole: "So?"
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It should go like this:
"As a Mom, I need eyes on the back of my ass."
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Did I miss any?
No, your life's work is now done and you are free to stop posting.
Please.
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Functional? (Score:3)
If by functional one means able to send nerve impulses to the brain then maybe. If by functional you mean sending nerve impulses to the brain that can be resolved into pictures similar to the eyes in the head has not been proven. They throw about terms like "statistically significant" yet this the measurements of performance are taken by subjective humans. Humans have a tendency to see what they want to see. This experiment has not been replicated and is therefore suspect.
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Yes, but different kinds of sensory input can be utilized by the brain in amazing ways. Regardless of how the input comes in, it can be incorporated into the brain's sensory interpretation apparatus in amazing ways, and if the input resolution is high enough it could be used by the visual cortex in ways we probably can't even guess at yet.
This is not about putting eyes on your butt, but extrapolating what could be done with an alternative sensory apparatus and hacking the nervous system.
Re:Functional? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's already long known that a lot of the seeing is done in the brain. When someone draws something on your hand or other part of the body you can still "see it" even if you are blindfolded. The resolution is just isn't as good. Humans can learn to see with their tongues: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/1946/description/The_Seeing_Tongue [sciencenews.org]
They can also see with sound - either echolocation or pitch vs left-right volume. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLziFMF4DHA [youtube.com]
http://www.seeingwithsound.com/ [seeingwithsound.com]
This transplant experiment isn't very useful in my opinion. Yeah it shows that if you grow an eye on a different spot on a tadpole it can sometimes kind of work. But how useful is that? The artificial eye experiments on humans are far more useful.
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Oops that seeing tongue link is paywalled.
Try this one instead: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=device-lets-blind-see-with-tongues [scientificamerican.com]
On to (Score:1)
The headline should say "on to". I'm becoming I grammar Nazi, but damn it editors...
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This is /.
If you read it at all, you can't help but becoming at least mildly fascistic with respect to grammar.
Big deal (Score:4, Insightful)
Certain humans have had interchangeable head parts and posterior parts for years now. We call them "politicians".
Re:Big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
Certain humans have had interchangeable head parts and posterior parts for years now. We call them "politicians".
I think they mostly talk out of their asses, though, and certainly not see out of them. They tend to even ignore crap that's right in front of their regular head-mounted eyes, so I'm not sure that gluing a set to their posteriors will change anything.
Oh come on (Score:3)
Isn't life already tough enough for tadpoles without some "scientist" grafting eyes onto their butts and jolting them with electricity?
Four-assed Monkey (Score:1)
These Kinds of Scientists ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sometimes you hear about shit that some researchers are up to, and you know that they've got that circuit in their head that causes them to gravitate toward experimental research like putting drops of acid into rabbit's eyes or raising chimpanzees in total isolation with nothing but chickenwire mother surrogates, all justifiable with perfectly reasonable arguments about how it's a shame there's no other way to do it and the insights are too valuable to pass up, but in your heart you know that the right thing to do is to stuff that researcher into a big canvas sack with a cinderblock, beat it with a baseball bat until it stops screaming, then dump it over the side.
Morbid and largely pointless (Score:4, Insightful)
In the land of the blind... (Score:2, Insightful)
...the man with eyes in his ass is king.
You say all that above but face it, you're wrong. Much of medicine has been a matter of "what if we do this?". Same for much of science in general. That is what science is; asking questions and then testing to get answers.
Understanding how things work for one organism can lead to breakthroughs in our understanding of other organisms. You may not see that, but it is still true.
captcha: nearby
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Can you explain how amphibians are very simple organisms? Even a single cell is not simple. Are you assuming that the next levels of abstraction, tissues, organs and amphibian bodies, are somehow very simple? Or are they just different and somewhat simpler / more rudimentary relative to reptiles? Can we say that in the tree of life, we are mammals, all mammals are reptiles and all reptiles are amphibians, evolutionarily speaking?
This is quite disgusting (Score:4, Insightful)
Not only do the scientists blind a tadpole, but they then graft the eyes onto another tadpole and where else but onto it's arse.
Sometimes I think that mankind deserves to become extinct.
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Where's the humanity?
I think they are planing to apply to the FDA for human trials next month
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I think they are planing to apply to the FDA for human trials next month
The FDA has already denied their application. They noted that in these difficult financial times, there was little need to replicate the same experiment that is shown on C-span every day.
Not a discovery (Score:2)
>Sometimes I think that mankind deserves to become extinct.
You are cordially invited to lead the way.
I think this is an interesting discovery, myself.
Technically, it isn't a discovery at all. They have been grafting body parts on tadpoles for a long time. The process is well documented. This may be the first time with an eye, but then again, until it is reproduced in another lab, it is just a report. Even if reproduced, it still wouldn't be a discovery, any more than building Hoover Dam was a discovery because nobody else had done it before.
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Sometimes I think that mankind deserves to become extinct.
Don't worry, we are working on it
Animal torturers - how brave... (Score:1, Insightful)
" they showed learning behavior when confronted with electric shock"
Yes, I bet they did.
These perverted monsters get their rocks off by torturing animals all day.
Don't think so? Then why are they terrified of the public SEEING what they actually do?
You know those undercover videos you've seen inside vivisection laboratories, where the so-called 'scientists' are punching beagles in the face, screaming at the animals they are supposed to be 'caring' for, and committing atrocity after atrocity? Just ask yourse
So with a little development... (Score:2)
Maybe within a few short years conservatives who are keeping their head in the usual place might actually be able to see themselves looking back.
We could call it an "eyenus".
But what is beyond science is .... (Score:2)
Politicians that don't talk through their ass and can pull their heads completely out of their rectums.
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Does this just seem fucked up to you? (Score:1, Insightful)
I mean... what the fuck kind of shit do we do to animals in the name of "science"?
Next, monkey asses (Score:2)
Expect to see the 5-assed monkey coming out of a lab near you!
Biology: no first principles, not a science ! (Score:2)
Here's the problem (forgive the shout) BIOLOGY HAS NO FIRST PRINCIPLES.
When a physicists set out to do an experiment, they start with first principles to establish a theory. This avoids wasting resources on pointless 'what if' s. Biology has nothing of the sort. Consider this experiment (which the TFA suggests has something to do with exploring the limits of the brain's plasticity):
a) done on the larval stage of a life form when cell development is at its most flexible unlike a mature human brain. Note
Cruelty to animals? (Score:2)
The blurb was so disturbing, I don't know if I even want to read the article. WHY would anyone do this? For that matter, what happens when the tadpoles mature? The frog is sitting on its eye. Could you imagine the pain that would cause.
And what is the point of this anyways? Sounds like something out of a horror movie. Sounds to me like these scientists need to be arrested.