Photo by l i g h t p o e t from shutterstock.com
For some creatures that exist on this planet, such as salamanders, starfish, or lizards, it’s not a big deal if they happen to “lose” a limb, or two. They can regrow these body parts right back, without having any trouble doing so. But these animals are not the only ones that can rebuild body parts that are damaged or completely destroyed.
For example, deers are able to re-sprout almost 66 pounds of antlers in only a quarter of the year. On the other hand, there are other animals that can regrow their hearts, such as zebrafish, and also some creatures that have the ability to regenerate their own heads, like flatworms.
Unfortunately, when it comes to humans, things are not that simple, because once we lose a body part, we can’t just wait for a few days or months to regrow them back on. If something happens, we need surgery, a lot of medical care and sometimes, we need scientists to come to our rescue.
If we dive into the more scientific part of the matter, we will discover that the individual cells that are found in the human body are continuously being replaced as they wear out. Although this is a process that slows down with aging, it still continues as long as the person lives. You can see this process in one of your organs: the biggest one, actually, which is the skin. In conformity with the American Chemical Society, every two to four weeks, people shed their outer layer of skin. If we calculate this for an entire year, it means that we lose 18 ounces of skin cells every 12 months.
If we pay attention to our skin when we scratch it or burn it, we will see that in a few days or a few weeks, our skin will regenerate by itself. However, regenerating full organs and body parts is not possible for us. But in the last few years, scientists decided to push their limits and they managed to cultivate a variety of human body structures, similar to those that have been favorably tested on animals.
In addition to that, they created some organoids, which are small-scale human organs, that they used for studying how human organs function. They were also able to discover and study the organ’s structure more deeply, which wasn’t possible before. Here are some examples:
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