Endogenous Bioelectric Networks & Regenerative Medicine

Michael Levin, PhD, Director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts, and Tufts Center for Regenerative and Development Biology at Tufts University, presented innovative research in the fascinating fields of bioelectric networks and regenerative medicine.
In this presentation, Dr. Levin sketched a roadmap for regenerative medicine focused on manipulating the bioelectric pattern memories in tissue (as distinct to popular approaches of micromanaging molecular pathways), and described advances in the areas of repair of birth defects, limb regeneration, and cancer reprogramming.
He first discussed some fundamental problems of cell and developmental biology that must be solved to gain complete control over growth and form.
Dr. Levin also described developmental bioelectricity and the tools his group has created to modulate voltage-based signals that orchestrate cell behavior toward building and repairing complex anatomies.
Biography
Michael Levin, PhD, originally trained in computer science and artificial intelligence. Interested in novel ways to store and process information, he moved into biology to understand how living tissue performs computation during morphogenesis. He received his PhD from the genetics department at Harvard Medical School, identifying the first genes regulating the left-right asymmetry of the embryonic bodyplan. His laboratory is at Tufts University, where he is Vannevar Bush professor of biology, and director of the Allen Discovery Center.
Levin’s group is focused on understanding the mechanisms and algorithms by which cells are harnessed toward the creation and repair of complex anatomies. His lab specializes in understanding the bioelectrical signals that all cells (not just neurons) enable coordination and decision-making at the organ level. Using a combination of molecular embryology, biophysics, and computational modeling, they develop biomedical applications and new advances in machine learning and robotics inspired by the software of life.

[@zralokk]

Great talk. Thanks for sharing. It is unfortunate that Michael's audio breaks during the Q&A.

[@MikeLisanke]

great talk as always from Dr Levin... really too bad that the audio was ripped up in the Q&A section when Mike answers questions!

[@baseline101]

talk start at 2:53

[@tyfoodsforthought]

That is BANANAS!

[@h20no63]

So why have humans not evolved to have these traits of regeneration? It seems pretty helpful. I have seen other talk or it may be this video where doctor levin states the genome of flat worms is a mess. But we have sequenced the human genome . Did evolution select against regeneration for a stable genome?

[@DavidJones-gv5wr]

That’s an interesting question! In the Q/A, Dr Levin did mention that aquatic environments are more conducive to regeneration than terrestrial environments. In addition, he also said that the primary concern of larger, terrestrial vertebrates is to stop blood loss and prevent infection, both of which require a rapid response, leading such animals to prefer scarring over regeneration. Given the ecological success of regenerating planarians, I don’t know how much their messy genomes are holding them back, but I am also not an expert in planarians. Hope this clears some stuff up!

[@alflud]

I'm 48 years old and 2 years ago began regrowing one of my molars. I hadn't had a tooth there for decades - I was in my 20's when that spot became 'permanent' gum and I remember it very _very_ well. If I may? An abscess had formed underneath the rotting tooth and I was in my dentist's office first thing in the morning, waiting outside for them to show up. The dentist himself arrived first and he let me in and offered to get straight at it and I was glad for that because I was in great pain. Then, however, he presented me with some bad, disappointing news and told me there was nothing he could do at the moment that he was going to prescribe me a regimen of antibiotics which would take 5 days to work. "Why can't you just pull it out?" I asked him and he said he could but that he couldn't give me the anesthetic with the infection the way it was and I quickly said "Do it!" and laid back into the chair. He warned me ... there was one thing I was _not_ to do and that was move my head, he said no matter how painful it got that I wasn't to move me head, ok? He got up on top of me and knelt on my chest like no dentist ever did and again warned me not to move my head. Where I thought I was in the worst pain _ever_ in one second I was quickly relieved of that notion in the next - the pain was absolutely excruciating, like nothing I'd ever thought possible, the crunching, the twisting and pulling ... this time I wasn't just hearing it I felt ever bit of it AND ...... I had to keep my head still throughout the lot of it. If you search around you'll find images of how they used to pull teeth in the old days, the dentists used to pay young boys to pull on a towel that was wrapped around the forehead of the patient, pulling his/her head back into a cup in the dentist's chair but I didn't even have that - I had to keep it still by myself and there was a point where I started blacking out but I freaked out and thought "I can't!" and I didn't! I stayed fully conscious throughout and the experience 'broke' me in a way. It did something to me that I can't explain and as you can see ... I can explain things pretty good. It's no coincidence that that's where this new tooth is forming - it can't be. Since you've asked such a pertinent question here too ... it doesn't take much in the way of resources for a body to make a new tooth, does it? We're all born with the ability to regenerate our teeth but we lose it as we move into adulthood ... why is that? We obviously need our teeth, perhaps even more as we grow older, so from an evolutionary viewpoint it doesn't make sense for this ability to just disappear, does it? I am 48 and my body obviously, without any doubt whatsoever still has the ability to regrow a tooth so why isn't it regrowing all of the missing teeth? I've got plenty more gaps in there that are filled with dentures and I can't imagine that the physical resources aren't available to fill those gaps so what's going on? We all _should_ be regrowing out teeth into old age. Who can say we should not?

[@Dan-gs3kg]

Regeneration in humans is extremely extremely expensive, it's selected against for the same reason that myostatin inhibitors are selected against: The population would die out due to starvation.

[@BaldTV]

humans have evolved from planaria to not have these traits

[@fannyalbi9040]

he did show one of his talk, we have this ability when we were young but lost it as adult. one kid lost part of the finger and grew back

[@simonthomas296]

At 13:32 Michael says that these animals have solved aging. He goes on to say "The individual cells do senesce and die, the animal as a whole is immortal because it regenerates anything that is lost. We have worms in our lab that are basically indirect physical continuity with worms that were here half a billion years ago. These are literally them; they have solved that problem". Similarly, humans are basically indirect physical continuities of early humans (same for any organism). Individual humans have died, but they just regenerate what we they have lost via their germ line. It is not that clear what it actually means for something to die if we allow physical continuity between generations.

[@Theodorus5]

Good point...

[@mikemoss2275]

" It is not that clear what it actually means for something to die if we allow physical continuity between generations." It actually is clear just do not confuse individual organisms with groups of organisms (in which groups also include generations)

[@SS369]

@@mikemoss2275 I agree

[@laurenpinschannels]

memetic memory has been weak until now

[@Inwoodarts]

Imagine their lab trash, thousand monstrosities, mutant chimeras. Ethics and security comes to mind as serious concerns, but not addressed. Human tech is on runaway mode... straight for the rocks?

[@denzelhorton3280]

Bro who cares? The only thing ethics does is slow down the rate at which scientific progress can be made.

[@MikeTooleK9S]

@@denzelhorton3280 dr mengele ova here. thats the comment i passed on making. this science is pretty f-ed up. the man who looks down on these medical waste frogs is not establishing the future of medicine. just his own karma

[@mikemoss2275]

I bet the misled people of alternative or integrative medicine (ie quackery) haven't got a clue what he's talking about.

[@slickheisenberg8208]

Which doesn’t stop them from using the information from talks like this, and repackaging it into quack medicine. It’s amazing what you find when you climb into the esoteric KZbin rabbit hole.

[@PhullKnameNullContent]

You may have missed the acupuncture reference during the introduction.

[@fooballers7883]

this is mind blowing...life is all about signalling...