My latest from Popular Science: The scientist who wants to regrow arms
I met a lot of interesting people with a lot of wild ideas while I was working on my book the Body Builders (Which you can and should preorder by clicking here).
But Michael Levin's ideas were so wild, I decided to go back after I finished the book and look a little more closely. He is the topic of my latest story for popular science. This guy has done some crazy stuff -- he has reprogrammed the cells of frogs so that they grow six arms, induced a tadpole to grow an eye on its gut. He has even made a worm with two heads. He sent me a video that is truly spooky.
Check this out:
If you look closely, you will see he has turned the back tail, into a second head!
Levin has done all this by manipulating the polarity across cell membranes. And he hopes someday soon to use this technique to regrow human limbs..
You can click here to see how it might work:
He and his colleague David Kaplan at Tufts have designed a sleeve they call a biodome. More details on the link. But they soak the amputation site in a solution that effects the flow of ions across cells membrane, then protect it from infection.....
and presto....
